


This is Ourselves (Under Pressure)

by clex_monkie89



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-29
Updated: 2007-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 29,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clex_monkie89/pseuds/clex_monkie89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Nightshifter, Sam and Dean hit the road. What follows is three months of fear and frustration with the FBI hot on their heels, trying to avoid the long arm of the law while still continuing to work. It's not easy; being on the run doesn't leave much time for breathing, never mind sleep, sex or any much-needed downtime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This is Ourselves (Under Pressure)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place before Folsom Prison Blues and was written largely prior to the episode's airing. It's an established relationship.
> 
> The first thing I have to do is thank my wonderful betas alazysod and namegoeshere, and fiddleyoumust for pushing me and poking me and telling me to STFU when I cried about wanting to give up. If it weren't for you guys I know this would never have been finished.
> 
> When I first signed up for this I had the perfect idea for what I was going to write. About a month and a few hundred words in I decided that just wasn't going to work. One day I was sitting in the library after classes and looking through spn_outsidepov and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to write Sam and Dean on the run from the FBI from the point of view of the people chasing them.
> 
> That isn't this. Sam and Dean are still on the run from the FBI but this fic isn't as heavy on the outsider's point of view as I originally intended. Nonetheless I like how it came out.
> 
> This is my fic; the twenty-seven thousand word Nightshifter coda. It was all-but-Jossed when Folsom Prison Blues aired days before the first draft had to be turned in but it persevered and with a change of attitude and some re-tooling I can confidently say it is better than it was.

When they leave the bank, it's in silence. There's no music coming from the stereo, no talking, just the heavy sound of their erratic breaths and the deafening silence in the car.

Dean's foot stomps on the gas pedal as he pushes the car to her limit. Sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety... He tries to put as much distance between them and the bank as he can before Henriksen can send his merry band of armor-plated goons after them.

They're out of the parking complex and down the side streets by the time Sam's brain can think any further than, _oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God._ It's early morning, late enough for the sun to be fully risen, but neither Sam or Dean are stupid enough to think they're clear of danger yet.

Sure enough, just as they're about hop on the interstate towards Sheboygan and get the hell out of Dodge (and Milwaukee), Sam hears the by now familiar sounds of helicopters overhead. All night long the choppers had been circling the bank. Sam had assumed he would get used to them, but he didn't; in the middle of the night, in the early morning, he still had to force his ears past the sound of the blades to hear the things Dean said, to hear his own thoughts. He thought they were loud before but now that they're outside, now that the only thing separating him and his brother from the helicopters is the thin metal of the Impala, they're thousands of times worse. It's almost deafening.

Like a switch is flipped, Sam's heart starts to race; his blood rushes through his veins so loudly he swears he can almost hear it pounding in the back of his skull. The surge of blood is so sudden that the he feels dizzy for a moment; everything swoops and spins and he feels his eyes screw shut and his whole face scrunch up.

"Stop it, Sam." Dean's voice is steady and sure but Sam can hear the way his leg is shaking from the change in his pocket, can hear the jittery pinging noise Dean's ring makes as he taps it against the steering wheel.

"I'm not doing anything," he protests weakly. Sam's stomach churns and rolls as the adrenaline spikes and pools with nowhere to go. _It's the traffic, just the traffic. It's morning and it's Thursday—Friday?—and it's just some local news station monitoring the traffic. It's not a police chopper._

"They probably don't even know we're gone, yet." Sam doesn't know whether he was thinking or speaking, but he _does_ know what the heaviness in his jaw means.

Before he can ask, Dean's shoving a plastic Wal-Mart bag at him and telling him, "If you chuck on the car, you're licking it up so you better aim right."

Sam gags up the Chinese food from yesterday afternoon and the chocolate shake he made Dean pull over and get on the way to the bank last night. His mouth tastes rancid; it's thick with stomach acid and teriyaki. His voice is hoarse and cracks, croaks as his throat closes again, briefly. "Ugh. That was gross."

"Think you'd be used to throwing up by now. You've been doing it on the run for like, what? Nineteen years of your life now?" Dean's voice is hollow, an awkward attempt at teasing.

"I don't throw up on the run. When we're running, I'm fine; it's when I'm doing nothing that—oh God." Sam gags again, his stomach emptying itself of the rest of its contents.

"Well, that was downright sexy."

Sam tries to respond but all he can manage is to slump forward, lean his forehead on the dash and groan. He can feel his head pounding, throbbing. It feels like there are a thousand tiny people inside his skull and they're all trying to dig their way out with pick-axes.

Sam's eyes are clenched tight but he can feel Dean's hand just above his knee, gripping tightly for a moment before relaxing. Dean's hand doesn't leave; it slides until his fingers are between Sam's thigh and the seat. Dean's thumb is stroking back and forth on the inside of his knee, and Sam is grateful for the contact. "Get some sleep, Sammy. We'll be in Green Bay by the time they pull their heads out of their asses and start looking for us."

Sam spits a mouthful of saliva and predigested egg foo yung into the bag and grimaces. His voice is slurred and low when he mumbles, "Fucking Packers."

\--

Victor Henriksen is not amused by the little "present" the Winchesters leave him. He is also not surprised. They have escaped custody before; they've been arrested and booked four times since Dean's "death" in St. Louis and pulled over at least a dozen more times since then. They've been in and around countless gruesome crime scenes and may or may not have had a hand in a detective in Baltimore killing her partner to let them escape.

The unconscious guards are a peace offering. _We let your guys go, you let us go._

Unfortunately, Victor's never been much of a man for compromising.

"Put out an A.P.B. on them, get the choppers up and set up roadblocks. The Winchesters will not be leaving this city." He knows they're already long out of the bank; they're smart enough not to stick around. If he moves quickly, though, he might be able to catch them before they're out of the county. "Tell the news stations we've got a manhunt going on. These Winchesters are armed and dangerous with no respect for human life; they can and will kill anyone who gets between them and their goals." So close, he's almost got them. "And don't forget the dad; if his sons are here there's a chance he is, too."

\--

Dean pulls over at around two in the afternoon. He's not completely sure where they are, but they haven't seen civilization for an hour or so. He's almost positive they're still headed towards Lake Manitoc, but it's hard to tell, what with the old maps and blacked-out road signs.

The gas is almost completely gone, the needle sitting squarely on the _E_ , and there's an extra four hundred miles displayed on the car's odometer. Dean drove in circles and squares and crosshatches the whole way here, leaving a trail he hoped would be difficult, if not impossible, to follow. He got "lost" on purpose twice on dusty back roads, and got lost by accident once, completely turned around by his random maneuvers. He was seventy-something miles closer to Milwaukee by the time he realized it.

He hasn't seen hide or hair of anything even slightly resembling law enforcement in three hours, but he knows better than to think they're safe. False security kills people. It killed Jess, it killed that lady in New York, and it almost got them killed on more than a few occasions. Hell, if they hadn't let themselves forget about the cops fucking _surrounding_ the bank, Ron might still be alive right now. But then he and Sam would be dead or worse.

Dean almost feels guilty for that thought, but it's true so he can't let himself feel too bad. Ron died to save Sam—a noble sacrifice. Or something. There's no use beating himself up over it anyway; there's nothing he can do to change it now.

Dean groans to himself and drops his head backwards. "I've been up _way_ too fucking long. Sam, wake up! Wake up, dude, you're drooling all over yourself." He flings a hand sideways in Sam's general direction and hits air. He does it a second time and the squishy resistance at his fingertips combined with Sam's pained yelp tells him he hit eye.

Sam tries to talk, fails, wipes the drool off his chin and tries again. "Whuh?"

"Come on, Sleeping Beauty, rise and shine and all that shit."

"My arms hurt."

"You fell asleep in the S.W.A.T. stuff; I'm surprised you can feel anything at all." Dean opens his door and climbs out of the car. "Come on, Sam; get your ass in gear."

"I have to pee," comes the groggy voice from inside the car. Dean doesn't even bother trying to hold in his laughter. "Bathroom. I have to go to the bathroom. Shut up." Dean is still snickering when he maneuvers himself out of the vest and peers into the car.

"Well, what are you waiting for? I'm not gonna hold it for you."

"Pretty please?"

Dean's shirt hits Sam in the face as he strips.

\--

Two hours after they've changed and pissed and gotten going again, they make it to what they think may have, at one point, been Lake Manitoc. It doesn't really matter one way or the other, though, so long as there aren't people around to call the cops on them.

After a few hours of wading and searching, they manage to stumble across a cabin that is still mostly whole. There's some water damage and the smell of mold is heavy on the inside, but they've lived in worse conditions for much, much longer than they plan on staying here.

They can't get the car up the muddy hill no matter how hard they try. It keeps getting stuck and lodged in the mud and no matter how hard they push or how much Dean sweet-talks his girl she just won't budge. They end up guiding her to a somewhat dry spot underneath a patch of trees and grabbing their bags and weapons from the trunk.

By the time they get everything in the cabin and settled, Dean has already been up for over twenty-four hours. Despite this, and despite Sam sleeping through most of the morning, Dean manages to guilt and browbeat Sam into sleeping the first shift.

During his first shift as lookout, Dean cleans every last gun, knife, and crossbow they own. Twice. He doesn't walk the perimeter; he doesn't feel safe enough to leave Sam in the cabin by himself. He checks and rechecks the salt lines and cats' eye shells obsessively. With an hour left to go, Dean gets bored and antsy and starts carving any and all the runes and protective symbols he knows into the floor.

They're both too tired at the first shift change to do much more than acknowledge each other's presence. Dean grunts in Sam's general direction and Sam throws a half-hearted hand gesture in Dean's.

Sam spends his entire shift sitting as close as he can to Dean and angling a flashlight away from his sleeping brother's face while he reads. He goes through two and a half playlists on his iPod before the alarm on his watch beeps. He gives Dean another half an hour before he wakes him up.

If Dean notices the extra time Sam gave him, he doesn't show it. Sam tosses and turns for fifteen minutes before Dean gets fed up. He spreads his legs, tells Sam to lie down and pulls a blanket over him. Sam finally falls asleep with Dean's hand in his hair and John Mayer wondering in his ear whether or not he's living his life the right way.

Dean spends his entire second shift with Sam asleep in his lap, his head on Dean's left thigh. He has his left hand running through Sam's hair and his right scribbling down possible plans of escape and contacts in a notebook.

 _Hot cop in Minnesota - Kaitlyn? Karen? Courtney? K sound._

Chick cop in Baltimore - Let Sammy out - Ask Sammy her name.

Deacon - Arkansas - C.O. - Knew Dad.

Rookie in Georgia - Mandroid Light - Erinn? Aarron? Aerin? Fucked up spelling.

Alex Brenin in New Jersey - Man love for Sammy - Do not _leave alone together no matter what._

Somewhere around the fourth hour of his shift, coincidently right around the time he gets to Brenin's name, Dean allows himself to be distracted by the stray and in no way purposeful thought of accidentally pouring a large vat of flesh-eating bugs onto a person while they are still alive.

Dean sleeps one more shift during which Sam reads over his notes and barely manages to hold back his laughter at the crude drawings of what he presumes to be The Many Deaths of Alex Brenin.

\--

Three days after they arrive at the cabin, they decide it's finally safe enough to leave. They spend an hour and a half trying to dig and push and shove their car out of the mud. Sam makes no less than three references to _My Cousin Vinny_ and Dean makes no less than five threats to Sam's life and/or various vital and functioning parts of his body.

Dean meanders along in a vaguely southern direction until they manage to get Bobby to pick up his phone and give then the rundown. Bobby says the roadblocks have been taken down but there's still increased patrols on the state's borders. He says they should be able to get out of the state easily, just so long as they don't do anything stupid.

\--

It's only a small car chase; it probably wouldn't even have made the news if it weren't for the Blues Brothers car crash the cops got into that let them escape.

Gotta love those five-way intersections.

Dean still doesn't think it was bad enough to warrant getting hit for.

And Sam hits friggin' _hard_ ; Dean's arm is numb for a good five minutes afterwards.

He was only doing seventy-five. How was he supposed to know there was some sheriff's deputy sitting behind a billboard? That kind of shit didn't really happen outside of old TV shows, anyway.

\--

Sam and Dean make it from the Wisconsin border and the "routine stop" from Hell to Bobby's in three days.

Bobby sets them up in their old room, even though they all know the boys will be gone in about a day or so.

It's at breakfast in the morning when Sam brings up the car.

"We're gonna need to leave it, Dean. You don't think the FBI didn't take down the plates of every car in this whole parking structure? We're lucky we got out!" That condescending tone is creeping into Sam's voice again and Bobby knows exactly how Dean is going to react to it -- the same way he always does.

"We're not leaving my fucking car, Sam! Why don't you just find something else to bitch about, eh, princess?"

"Why don't you ever just listen to reason?" Sam is roaring now, getting that same pitch to his voice he used to get with John right before The Big Fight.

Bobby cuts in before they get started again, trying to prevent another Winchester war from exploding in the middle of his kitchen. "Why don't you both shut up?" To Bobby's amazement they do. They always do, but it never ceases to stun him how _quickly_ they listen to orders; it's like hitting mute on a TV set. "You know damn well you don't have to leave the car, Sam. I don't know why you boys have to pick a fight about every last thing."

Sam tilts his head to the side. "What do you mean we don't have to leave it?"

"I mean the invisibility spell on it." Bobby sees the blank looks on their faces and wishes John were still alive so he could shoot the man again. Nowhere serious; just the leg or an arm. Just something to teach him a lesson for leaving his boys so far in the dark. "Don't tell me you ain't never wondered why you weren't getting pulled over every time a cop spotted your car."

Dean scoffs and cocks his head back. "Our car isn't invisible; I can see it from your window. Part of it at least. When was the last time you cleaned?"

"Yes, it is. Invisibility ain't what everyone thinks it is. You don't just vanish off the face of the Earth, or blend into a wall or anything like that. Invisibility spells affect the memory. Nine people can stand around her and each one will see a completely different car."

Sam looks nauseated; his face is all screwed up and for a moment Bobby is absolutely sure that the sausage and eggs Sam just ate are going to come back up all over his kitchen table. "You—you, uh, put a _spell_ on us? On our stuff?"

"I did what your daddy told me to." Bobby knows the boys share their father's aversion to nearly all things having to do with magic, but even John Winchester knew when to suck it up. "It's just a small spell. A little tickle to the memory. It's cheaper than painting the car a new color every state."

Sam giggles. A full-on, little kid giggle. He is obviously nervous. "You know, when Harry did it, it _actually_ made him invisible."

Dean cocks an eyebrow at Sam. "Who?"

Sam winces and struggles with himself for a moment, mouth opening and closing like a fish, before sighing. "Harry Potter."

"That some dude from Stanford?"

"Sure."

"Hey, Hardy Boys, you two wanna focus?"

"What?" they echo. Bobby suppresses a shudder; fifteen years and that still hasn't stopped being creepy.

"Invisibilty? Your car? Ringin' any bells, here?"

"Right, right." Dean bobs his head and sucks his teeth absently. "Well, hell." He takes a swig and finishes off his beer. Dean leans back in his chair, kicks the front legs up and scratches his stomach. "If it's that easy, then why don't you just put some of that magic mojo on us? It'd save us an assload of trouble."

"Don't either of you boys ever read anything in your Daddy's book?" Honestly, sometimes he doesn't know how those two are still in one piece. Lifetime hunters and they _still_ don't know their heads from their asses. It's like speaking to retarded children. "I put that spell on you two and ain't either of you ever gonna find each other again."

Sam walks to the fridge and grabs another beer, opening it on the counter. He takes a gulp before he hands it off to Dean. "Why not? Don't spells and curses usually go on blood?" A moment ago he was disgusted at the knowledge of magic being used on their car, but Dean asks about magic being used on them _personally_ and he doesn't even bat an eye.

If they were anyone else on the planet, Bobby would say that kind of blind trust would get them killed.

"Yeah, why else would Sammy here grow tits with me every time I piss off one of the fluffy bunny pagans?" Sam grabs the beer back out of Dean's hand and smacks him across his head.

"You know, maybe if you would stop referring to them as 'fluffy bunny pagans' they would stop turning _us_ into women to try and teach _you_ how to respect them."

Dean points a finger right at Sam in righteous indignation. "If they spell woman with a 'y' they're asking for it. Besides, I respect women; I just don't respect idiots. Or amateurs. Or anyone who names their pet 'Mr.' or 'Mrs.' anything. Will you gimme back my beer?"

"As I was saying," Bobby interrupts. "Invisibility ain't meant for people. It don't work like that. You two can see the car 'cause it's your property; I can see it 'cause I'm the one who did the spell. If I put it on you two, you ain't never gonna see each other again 'cause blood don't own blood. Your own Daddy, rest his soul, wouldn't be able to see you two, either."

Dean drops the front legs of his chair back on the ground, one eyebrow climbing high on his face. "Well, then what the hell are we supposed to do?"

"Run? Stop flashing your pearly whites all over every goddamned news program there is? Try not to get arrested? Is any of this getting through?"

\--

Growing up, Sam hated all the "resetting" they would do: all the times they would pick up and cut ties from whatever lives they were living at the time. New names, new back-stories, new pagers (or cell phones when they had them), new everything. But now Sam is grateful. Now they have protocols. They know exactly what to do in case of an emergency. And the FBI on their tails most definitely qualifies as an emergency.

Sam shreds, breaks, cuts and dumps all checks, IDs, credit cards and papers they have. Dean pulls all the numbers out of their cell phones, snaps the SIM cards and runs over the shells.

They both take turns hustling pool and poker for a week and buy new phones with cash and names they haven't used since Sam was nine.

Dean uses payphones and rehearsed names to call Bobby, Ellen, Joshua and the others and warn them.

Sam finally gives up his Stanford email and contacts Becky with a shell account to tell her it's not true, the news is wrong, and he's sorry for the mess.

He purges the shell before she responds.

\--

Dean's shaving when Sam springs his big plan on him. It's not the best timing in the world but Sam justifies it to himself with the knowledge that it's damn near impossible to actually cut yourself with an electric razor.

Sam doesn't actually manage to get his whole plan out, Dean cuts him off right after he gets to the part where he thinks Dean should stop being the only person in America who still dresses like a greaser from the fifties. He's less angry than Sam thought he would be, "good morning" sex keeping his anger to a dull roar instead of the all-out screaming match Sam was expecting.

"I like my clothes, man! The Feds are after us, so what? What do you want me to do, dye my hair blond and start going by some douche-baggy name like Chad?" Sam refrains from telling his brother about all the rich-kid frat douches at Stanford named Dean, Sam's already brushed his teeth so an "I'm sorry" blowjob is out of the question for at least another half hour.

"They've got our fingerprints. They've got an old mugshot of you and a shitty mugshot of me. All we _need_ to do is keep one step ahead of them, okay?"

Dean tilts his head up and to the side to get at the curve of his jaw by his ear and Sam is mesmerized, transfixed by the arch is his neck. The tanned skin and light stubble, the fresh hickey just under where Dean's thumb is now; the one Sam sucked onto Dean's neck a little more than an hour ago. Sam almost forgets that they're having an argument right now, that Dean has just said something that requires some form of coherent response. "I just don't want us to get caught."

"We won't." Dean's voice is soft but insistent, like getting caught is impossible; like there's no way on Earth it could happen. Sam is positive that Dean knows better than to rely on false bravado. But he also knows about self-fulfilling prophecies. Sam's pretty sure that only works on people, though, and probably, with their luck, only in regards to juvenile delinquency.

Dean's always been better at lying to himself than Sam is. For all Dean's talk and the way he acts, Sam is the actual realist here; Dean is the one who is under the false assumption that everything will work out in the end. Sam doesn't want to rot in a prison cell; he doesn't want to die strapped to a chair. "But what if we do?"

Sam knows better than Dean this time. There is no way to get out of this one all right; there is no magic gun to fix it and take care of all the quarter-million FBI agents who want them dead. Sam almost feels like laughing, either that or throwing up; he's not too sure which.

"We won't."

"But what—"

"We're not going to get caught, Sam." Not Sammy. Sam. "You heard the news; we're Bonnie and Clyde. They never caught Bonnie and Clyde."

Sam's brain can't even begin to think of any of the obvious jokes.

He knows for a fact that Dean knows exactly what happened to Bonnie and Clyde.

\--

Agent Frank MacIntire has been working on the Winchester case for more than a month, since before the fiasco in Milwaukee. He's not new to the FBI but he's not nearly as experienced as most of the people on this case are. He's got almost a decade of work here under his belt but this is his first real high-profile case and it's so completely different from what he's used to that sometimes he has flashbacks to his first week.

They can't get a solid make on the car. It's not that they don't have enough witnesses; they have them in fucking _droves_. If Winchesters are one thing it's... Well, if they're one thing it's psychotic. If they're two things they're also terrifying. Delusional and remorseless rank up there too.

If they're ten things they're show-offs. They almost don't seem to care who the fuck sees them. Their "disguises" are laughable at best and they use the names of rock stars and TV characters like this is some fucking game to them. No, the problem with their car or cars isn't not having enough witnesses—it's having too many of them.

At first there were so many conflicting statements that they thought the Winchesters stole their cars and just lifted a new one every hundred and fifty miles or so.

That theory had its first hole blown in it quickly, though; none of the supposed cars they were driving were ever found or reported stolen. Add that to the fact that in several small towns they were seen in nine or ten different cars at the exact same time and the conclusion is simple: no one on the face of the planet seems to be able to make out the likely custom built mutt of a car.

It moves and that's everything they know for sure; it's the only constants in every report.

They've shown picture after picture to everyone who has ever even glimpsed someone who looks like any of the Winchesters. MacIntire would be hard-pressed to say if the same car has ever been picked twice.

It's a Mustang, it's a Ford, it's a Chevy. It's a Pinto, it's a Corvette, it's a Cadillac. It's an El Camino, it's a pickup, it's a Jeep.

It's a '57, a '62, a '65, a '67, a '69, an '03 and an '07.

It's a '57 Plymouth Fury, a cherry red '64 Rambler, and a brand new Aston Martin. It's a silver DeLorean, a black Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, and a bright, prison orange '69 Dodge Charger. It's a beat to hell, falling apart at the seams '74 Dodge Monaco, a sparkling new '73 Ford Mustang and a run of the mill VW Bug.

If the car has been made, someone has reported seeing one or both of the Winchester brothers in it.

It's a gleaming beauty, it's half restored, it's a piece of junk with duct tape doors and cellophane windows.

It's the motherfucking Batmobile and the goddamned Black fucking Pearl.

\--

On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha, Dean is taking advantage of the unusually nice weather to spend some quality time with his brother.

They're pulled over on what passes for the shoulder. The car is in park, idling and rumbling in place like it has been for the last twenty minutes. "You Shook Me All Night Long" is blaring from the speakers, words nearly lost to the loud, thumping bass of the stereo turned up to eleven.

Dean's got one hand on the trunk to steady himself and the other on Sam's waist, keeping Sam's dick far away from the sun-heated metal as he thrusts into him. Sam has both of his hands planted on the trunk, palms sweaty and slipping, sliding and forcing him to tense up to keep from possibly sliding right off the car. Dean leans forward and thrusts again, nips at Sam's shoulder as his brother arches his back and scrabbles at the metal.

He's pressed against Sam's back, bending them forward and sliding his hand onto one of Sam's. He guides their hands until Sam's head is resting on one of his forearms and Dean's mouth is skating trails through the sweat on Sam's neck. Sam is moaning and babbling and pushing back against Dean, trying to kick his own legs out wider, but the pants around his ankles traps him in place.

Dean's hand slides from Sam's side towards the front, scritch-scratches the soft spot below his navel and presses against his stomach, pulls Sam flush against him, fucks Sam so deep his toes start to tingle from the straining muscles. Sam moans, whimpers, rolls his head on his arms and closes his eyes. He bites his lips, licks them and mouths wet trails along his own knuckles and fingers. Dean lets go of Sam's hand to slide his own up Sam's arm, across his back and up his neck. He slips his fingers into the hair at Sam's nape, pushes the thick strands up and off his neck, fists his hand in place and pulls lightly until he can get his mouth on Sam's neck.

He bites at Sam's shoulder and neck, leaving puffy red welts, maps open-mouthed kisses to his ear, takes the lobe into his mouth, bites it gently and lick and sucks at the sweat behind his ear. Dean laughs at the sudden huff of air Sam lets out when he starts to scratch Sam's stomach again. "What d'you want, Sammy?" he pants, out of breath and running out of steam. "Want some help or do you, _fuck_ , or do you still wanna try and come without anything?"

Sam scrunches up his face, tightening around Dean and making them both moan. "Fuck, fuck, fucking, Jesus Christ, Sam." Dean's hand slides from Sam's stomach down to grip his cock. It's not long at all before Sam comes in Dean's hand, gasping for breath and moaning loudly. It's even less time before Sam comes again, unaided except for the tight grip in his hair and around his chest as Dean fucks his overly-sensitive body, desperate to get himself off. It's that, Sam losing it that quickly, and messily, from nothing but Dean fucking him that helps to finally push Dean over the edge.

They both win the bet, but Sam doesn't get control of the stereo for even a single song. Dean declares himself the one and only winner on the grounds that since Sam didn’t go soft after his first little performance, that he only came once -- from Dean’s hand. "That was just a delayed reaction. The Dean Winchester Special. You're welcome, by the way."

\--

Sam has this list of things he wants to do before he dies -- not that he thinks about dying often or anything. Only sometimes.

It's a long list that has gone through several incarnations since its conception right after his thirteenth birthday.

Over the years, several things have been checked as they were completed, such as _graduate_ , _have sex_ , and _get a legal job_. Several others have been struck through and scratched out as their possibility has diminished. Among those are _turn thirty_ , _get law degree_ , and _buy a house_.

Sam _knows_ he won't make it to thirty, and probably not even to twenty-five. He's never going to law school now; he's never even going to finish the two degrees he was almost done with when this whole mess started up again. That angers him in the deepest parts of his brain when he realizes that if it weren't for meeting Jess there, his four years at Stanford would've been a complete and utter waste.

There are still over three hundred things left on Sam's list. A lot of them, like that stupid one about going to Hawaii with Dean on a vacation, will probably never happen but Sam can't make himself scratch them off.

The list ranged from things like getting a tattoo, which Dad never allowed, to going to the Guggenheim, with Dean, without him complaining.

Sam knows he has a clock hanging over his head ticking down how much longer he has before he turns and Dean has to take him out. He has two lists. The "original" one that doesn't matter much anymore and the new one that has the things he absolutely, positively does not want to die without doing.

Number one on his new list, the only one that matters, is _kiss Dean in public._

\--

They're walking through the middle of Detroit the first time Sam almost does it.

It's somewhere around one in the afternoon and the street is fairly busy. Dean's been jabbering on about something for the last half an hour, and Sam has no idea what it is exactly that Dean's been talking about because he stopped listening about three and a half blocks back.

It's just a kiss. Just one small kiss, in the middle of the sidewalk, in a big city. There's probably not even anyone looking anyway. Sam gathers all his courage together and stops his brother right in the middle of a sentence by throwing an arm across Dean's chest.

Dean is face to face with him now. "What?" He doesn't look happy. He doesn't look mad either, though.

Sam takes a deep breath and—

"I'm hungry."

—promptly loses all of his courage.

\--

Sam only lets himself worry about one thing at a time.

When they hunt, it's his destiny. The Yellow-Eyed Demon and its plans for him. The ones for Ava and Andy and all those other kids they don't even know about yet.

After and in between hunts, it's the FBI.

When he sleeps, his nightmares combine them for a brand new and different kind of torture.

Fox Mulder has bright yellow eyes and a tray full of razor-sharp and pointy instruments he hands to Sam. Gillian Anderson narrates the scene as Sam happily, _gleefully_ hacks his big brother to thousands of tiny pieces.

Dean bleeds in a multitude of colors and whispers, _"I'm not sorry. I couldn't do it. I'm not sorry. You can't make me."_

\--

Dean does not worry.

He doesn't worry about Sam and his so-called "destiny." He doesn't worry about The Demon or any stupid fucking "plans" some _thing_ out there might have for Sammy.

He _certainly_ doesn't worry about the fucking FBI or the police. They're a bunch of clueless, brain-damaged humans anyway. They can't find their asses with two hands, a map, a flashlight and a goddamned sherpa. They really aren't a threat. They don't even register on the radar. Really.

Dean is above all those other humans; it would be an insult to himself and to his father to be afraid of them. Ridiculous.

He doesn't have nightmares or anything like that. He doesn't wake up sweaty and crying like Sam does sometimes.

He _does_ have these dreams, though. Reoccurring ones.

Sam's on the floor in some random motel room. Dean knows in his heart that the bloody body is Sam, even though most of his head is missing.

Sometimes it's Dean holding the gun, but more often than not it's Sam with the Taurus held lax in his grip.

The dream has some small differences, but it always ends the same. Dean takes the gun, sometimes from Sam's cold, dead hand—sometimes it's already in his own hand—and puts it to his head to follow his brother. The gun always jams, and he's stuck in a room with the body of his dead baby brother until Sam wakes him up.

They aren't nightmares, though. They're just... unnerving. That's all. They only affect him for a few minutes when he first wakes up, and then they're gone like they never even happened.

And it doesn't matter what Sam says; he doesn't know anything. Dean just likes keeping his nails short now. That's why he bites them. It's cheaper than going and getting a manicure.

Not that he ever got manicures or anything either.

... Sam gets pedicures. With clear nail polish on them and everything.

\--

The first postcard comes almost two weeks to the day after the botched bank robbery, and Victor's name is in perfect inked print on the front. The ink is purple, sparkly, and smells like grapes. It's the kind of pen his twelve-year-old, Vikki, would use.

The postmark is from Winnemucca, Nevada. The card is of a dark sky with lightning striking and cacti in the foreground. The blurb on the back tells of Arizona's legendary thunderstorms.

The name on the card reads _Dick Kimble_ and the messy scrawl on the back says something he can't decipher.

The Winchesters don't even bother trying to avoid their detection. Their fingerprints are all over the postcard, even going so far as to leave one perfect thumb print right in the middle of it in dried ink.

The one-armed stick figure in the bottom corner mocks Victor from its perch next to his computer.

\--

Their money is running low again and a run-in with a cop car in Florence means they need somewhere to sleep until they can get the Impala fit for legal driving once more. The Motel 6 is the cheapest thing in the city so they've been staying in a room there for the last two and a half damn weeks.

Seventeen days.

It's the longest they've stayed in one spot in years without one or both of them stuck in a hospital. That's not counting werewolf cases of course, which usually take, with rare exceptions, at least two months to do.

Sam and Dean are both jittery and punch-drunk. They _are_ restless and are _getting_ reckless as of late and the paranoia that comes along with too many days of too little sleep is starting to set in. Sam can't stop complaining about every little thing and Dean keeps needling at Sam, poking every one of his pet peeves just to have something to do.

The propensity for crack fiends and hookers and drug dealers in Motel 6s, along with the frequency in which the police are at the motel _because_ of the previously mentioned crack fiends and hookers and drug dealers, are usually enough to keep Sam and Dean away from a Motel 6 at any cost. But in this case, they have no other choice. They don't have any spare credit cards—two are earmarked for hospitals, three for the car, and one is for bail in case of an absolute emergency—and they can't exactly sleep in the car when she's locked in a garage getting worked on.

The first night they spend in the room is pure hell. They fall asleep on the bed furthest from the door sometime around midnight, after their ears finally adjust to the screaming coming from the room next to them and the constant slamming of doors on either side of their room.

They don't usually share a bed unless it's a king, even after sex. Sam sprawls and rolls in his sleep and smothers Dean. And while Dean is used to waking up covered by a Sam blanket, he would much rather not have to wait an hour in to morning to piss just because he can't get out from under his brother. Lately though, since Milwaukee, they've been sharing beds almost every time they stop. Sam feels safer when he's close to Dean and Dean won't admit that he misses his Sam blanket. They still get rooms with two beds, though, both too paranoid and nervous to ask outright for a room with a king.

That first night in their room, they're woken up sometime around two-thirty in the morning by the unmistakable sound of a cop _pounding_ on a door. The only thing that keeps them from either wetting the bed or shooting straight through the door—there's a reason Dad never let Dean keep a gun under his pillow—is the realization that the pounding is not on _their_ door.

They don't go back to sleep that night.

The following nights aren't much better.

\--

Sam is naked on his back with Dean between his legs. Dean's hand is wrapped around Sam's cock, tugging lazily as he kisses his way from his brother's neck to his mouth.

Sam's missed this.

They've been running non-stop since Wisconsin and haven't had time to do much else besides run and hunt. Normally that wouldn't be too much of a problem, but when you don't have the time to pull over for sleep, pulling over for sex is pretty much right out of the question.

Right now, though, they're still taking their forced break. Nineteen days so far. The car is still being fixed, they have no money for food, and even Sam can only walk around a barely open K-Mart for so long before he starts to get bored. And Dean _has_ always said that the best way to cure boredom is to have lots and lots of hot, dirty, sweaty sex.

So here he is, naked spread out underneath Dean, with nowhere to be and nothing to distract him until check out, and that's not for another nine hours. Sam can't ask for anything more.

Well, maybe one thing.

"Dude, am I doing something wrong here? If you're not in the mood, just say something." Dean rolls onto his side a little and gives another sharp tug on Sam's still-soft cock. Sam feels his face get hot as the embarrassment sets in; he's supposed to have at least another twenty years before he starts not being able to get it up.

"No, I want to, I'm just kinda tired," Sam lies as he reaches for Dean's dick. "Let me—"

"No," Dean barks a moment too late. Sam's hand is already wrapped around Dean, who is half-hard at best. Sam lets his hand and head drop back to the mattress dejectedly. He'll bet all fourteen dollars he has in his wallet that he knows where Dean's thoughts had been a moment ago; they're afraid of the same things. _What if the cops come now? The guns and knives are on the table out of reach, our clothes on the floor. We can't run naked. If they catch us now everyone will know. Bobby, and Ellen, and_ everyone _will know we're fucking._

Well, okay, maybe not quite _that_ dramatic, but whatever the Dean equivalent of Sam's thoughts are.

Dean drops his forehead to Sam's and sighs. "I hate the FBI."

Sam nudges his face forward to catch his brother's mouth. They kiss and Dean grunts as Sam spreads his legs wider, his calf rubbing at the back of Dean's thigh. Dean takes the hint, rolling his hips, and Sam feels that nice stirring in the pit of his stomach. He slides a hand up his brother's back, fingers digging into the soft flesh on the shoulder blade as he thrusts up lazily.

A siren wails in the distance outside and both start and break apart.

"You wanna sleep with our clothes on tonight?"

"Great idea."

\--

The next postcard arrives from Panama, Oklahoma.

The front of the postcard boasts of sunny Florida skies and has a crude, hand drawn arrow pointing randomly into the beach crowd boasting _WALDO_ in large, messy letters.

The back of the postcard has a children's rhyme on it.

 _Run! Run! Run!_

As fast as you can!

You can't catch me!

I'm The Ginger Bread Man!

It's a sudden blow to Victor's pride when he realizes he's being outsmarted by someone who doesn't know that "gingerbread" is one word.

\--

Will Makoff watched one too many spy movies growing up. His whole life he knew he wanted to be just like one of his childhood heroes. Will spent nine years working undercover in Detroit before moving down to Virginia and joining up with the FBI. The movies lied. There's nothing exciting about the FBI; he's spent nearly every day of his last four years here doing paperwork and calling people on phones.

 

Sometimes Will thinks he'd give his right arm to leave the office.

\--

Harvelle's Roadhouse. Owned by Ellen Harvelle. No physical address, but it resides off of a dirt road near a highway in the middle of Nebraska. The damn place has been there as long as anyone can remember, owned by her husband before her, and before that, his parents, and back through the generations for who the fuck knows how long.

It has been on the FBI watch-list for almost forty years, ever since Starkweather and his girlfriend grabbed burgers there on the way to Wyoming back in '58.

In those thirty-nine years, dozens more people on dozens of wanted lists have been seen in and around Harvelle's Roadhouse, many of them repeatedly. It's like the place is some kind of nexus, a safe haven for all the scum in the country. Or at the very least a big chunk of them. But there's never been a scrap of real evidence, just a few vague witness accounts, not enough for a search warrant or even enough to bring Ellen Harvelle in for questioning.

When Gordon Walker was spilling his guts to the police and the FBI and anyone else with power who would listen, he mentioned "the roadhouse" one time. Only once. Every time he was asked about it after that, his mouth slammed shut tighter than a nun's legs and twice as fast.

Gordon Walker, who voluntarily ratted out everything he knew about Sam and Dean Winchester (apparently, John just up and vanished a few months back) despite knowing what hardened killers they are, won't say a single damned word about that place.

Agent Makoff wants to know just which one of his bosses' daughters he must have drunkenly fucked to get sent there.

The Roadhouse is dim and smoky. It's the middle of the afternoon and abandoned except for a couple tourists, just passing through. Ellen dries her hands with a dishrag as she leans against the counter, looking down at the fuzzy photograph he slides across to her.

"Ma'am, I just want to know if you've seen the man in this picture," he says, clipped and as polite as he can be. He doesn't think she'll recognize him based on the mugshot. It's eight years old and blurry to the point of nauseating, but it's the most recent picture of Sam Winchester they've been able to find.

The story goes that the kid was fall-down drunk and cracked his head open immediately after the bulb flashed. The rest of processing was skipped and the kid was taken to the ER—to this day no one will own up to why he didn't go to the infirmary in the jail—where he escaped within the hour.

"Isn't that that boy from Maine who went missing last year?"

 _No, no it wasn't, you scary bitch and you know it. That kid was Chinese._

"No, ma'am. Maybe you might recognize him better from a police sketch. This is only an approximation, though, so he may not look exactly like this." _Or anything like it._

Ellen takes the picture and looks at it. She stares long and hard and shakes her head.

"Sorry, he doesn't look familiar."

"What about this man?" He hands her another photo: Dean Winchester's latest mugshot from Baltimore. She stares at that picture, too, stares at it for a good five minutes.

"This one, I've seen him before." _Thank you, Jesus, a lead!_ "He was on that America's Most Wanted show, wasn't he? He killed a bunch of kids in Missouri, right?" _Fucking John Walsh._

"Only one woman, ma'am. He was stopped in the act of two others. This is very important: have you seen this man in person?"

"Sorry." She shakes her head, a small smile on her face. "Can't say I have." _Bullshit. Walker said they were here._

"If we find out you're lying, we can charge you with aiding and abetting known criminals."

"Boy, let me tell you something: I'm the only decent grub for a hundred and fifty miles in any direction. Probably a few hundred people come through here on any given day. I'm not saying those boys haven't been here, I'm just saying I haven't seen them."

"Of course you are."

Ellen slowly sets the glass she had just been cleaning down on the bar. "You know, I think you should leave right now. I've answered your questions."

"Of course. Thank you." _Scary,_ scary _, bitch._ He tries not to be glad that he's leaving empty-handed, but at least he's getting the fuck out of there.

\--

In Montana, Sam comes close to actually doing it.

They're in some diner off the highway, eating. It's seven in the morning on a Saturday and the place is almost completely empty. They're stuffed in the same side of a booth because Sam lied and said it looked like there was a bloodstain on his side. Dean bitched and moaned, but it was all for show because he scooted further inside the booth immediately.

Dean's got a stack of pancakes and a bacon cheeseburger in front of him. He's slurping on a glass of Coke and complaining about the lack of Pepsi, Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper in diners across the country.

Sam has already long since plowed through his omelet and hash browns. The fruit is out of season and too tart; he only needed one bite of a strawberry to figure that out. His orange juice was gone before his food ever even arrived.

Sam's running out of things to distract himself with. It would be so easy to do: just turn his head a little to the left and kiss his brother's neck. Just a small kiss. It doesn't have to be anything big.

He can't do it.

He can kiss Dean in the car, can suck his cock and beg Dean to fuck him 'till they both limp. But only as long as they're in private. Once there's even another single person around, Sam can't even make himself hold Dean's hand. Not that Dean does the whole "holding hands" thing, even alone, anyway.

Sam strikes a compromise with himself. He can't make himself kiss Dean in public, or do anything else openly affectionate where others can see, so instead he hooks his left leg over Dean's right and twists and turns his ankle until he has his foot tucked behind Dean's heel.

Dean swings his leg lightly, not in an effort to knock Sam off, but as a small acknowledgement of the action. Sam smiles and cuts himself a bite of Dean's pancakes.

\--

The third postcard arrives at his house while he's chasing ghosts in Florida.

He's standing in the middle of aisle four in a Publix grocery store when his wife calls him. Victor ignores the first three calls because he's talking to a bakery manager who claims to have been living with Dean Winchester for the last month. He's almost positive she's blowing smoke up their asses but she's the first lead they've had in a week.

An hour later, he and Reed are done talking to Kandi the bakery manager and in the car on the way back to their hotel when he remembers the calls. He calls the house twice before trying his wife's cell phone.

She's talking a mile a minute when she picks up the phone and Victor can't understand a word she's saying. "Vanessa, Vanessa, slow down. Slow down and speak clearly."

"They know where we _live_ , Vic." He doesn't have to ask who _they_ are. "Keisha brought in the mail and asked why we got a postcard from Lincoln Burrows. I didn't even know anything was wrong until Nicolette came home; I thought he was someone you knew, someone _real_. I didn't know he was from a damn TV show." Her voice is shaking and she's out of breath. She's sniffling. She's scared and she's been crying and he was too busy listening to some glory-hound babble on about nothing of consequence to answer the phone when his wife needed him. "I've got the kids, we're going to my mother's house, my battery is dying and I don't have my charger with me. I love you, baby, I'll call you when we get there." She hangs up before he can say anything else; before he can even tell her he loves her.

\--

Sam has been staring out the window for the last five hours. He's been silent all morning, even going so far as refusing to tell Dean what he wanted for breakfast—and, okay, sure, it was either stale donuts, stale bagels or cereal with gray milk, but still. Little bastard's still pouting over last night; you'd think the fucker could take a joke.

"Come on, 'who's your daddy?' That's funny!"

The glare Sam levels at him might scare a lesser man, but all it does to Dean is... Well, to be honest, it makes him a little horny. "It's not funny during sex, Dean."

"Of course it is!"

"I was very uncomfortable."

"That's what makes it funny!"

" _Dean_!"

"Dude, come on. Lighten up."

"You brought up _Dad_ during _sex_."

"Lots of people say 'who's your daddy' when they fuck and they aren't actually talking about their parents."

"And how many of those people are fucking their brothers when they say it, huh? Exactly." Sam doesn't even pause, doesn't give Dean the chance to answer before he barrels right on through. "You're an asshole and you're not funny and you can go fuck yourself."

"Oh, come on. I'll let you blow me to make up for it."

"You'll be lucky if I ever touch your cock again."

"Oh, what-the-fuck-ever, man. You're a total cockslut and you know it."

"I am not. And you're an asshole."

"You _beg_ to go down on me. You love my cock even more than I do. See, look at that," he nods towards the tented fabric of Sam's jeans. "You're getting hard right now and I'm only talking about it."

"Shut up."

\--

Dean and Sam are at an all-night laundry mat in Oklahoma washing their clothes after a bad fight with a chick that tried to go all Carrie on her senior prom. It took four runs through the heavy-duty washers to get all the blood—sheep, cow, goat, and Carrie Jr.—out, but three hours later they're almost done.

It's the middle of the night, so they didn't even bother to change. They just grabbed a couple of pairs of underwear from the backseat and hopped up on a counter to wait for everything to dry.

The dryer dings and Dean leaps off of the counter with a bounce, stripping off his jockeys on his way to get the clothes out. Sam doesn't even bat an eye. Dean's done this for as long as Sam can remember. It was part of the reason why they never did laundry during the daytime growing up. Sam has fond memories of Bobby reminiscing the one time they did, and Dean's naked adventure in the strip-mall. He was nine.

And of course, just because Dean is standing there, naked as the day he was born, that's the moment some random college girl—if her shirt is right—comes walking in. She just stands there for a moment and Sam can feel his eye twitch. Dean's right, he can be a little possessive at times.

Dean bends over and pulls on his warm, freshly clean jockeys. "Oh, yeah, nothing beats a pair of underwear fresh from the dryer!" Dean tosses a pair of Sam's stupid little briefs at his head. "Come on, bitch, tuck it in and hurry up. I wanna be out of here before Bambi over there drools herself to death."

\--

They're at the Flying J truck stop in Salt Lake City and they've been waiting for their food for almost twenty minutes now. That's not a long time to wait for food, even at a truck stop, but there's something about it that's not sitting right with Dean this time. Maybe it has something to do with the way their waitress keeps staring at them when she thinks they aren't looking.

"Hey, Sam..."

"Yeah. Me, too." Sam slides his laptop into his bag and Dean fits the journal back into his jacket as they get up from the booth. They're halfway to the door when some big, meaty guy with a hairnet and an apron stops them.

"Where you boys goin'? Your burgers'll be ready in a few minutes." Hairnet's voice is steady but he has a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. His eyes keep flashing out the window behind Dean and if there was any doubt before, he knows know that they've been recognized.

"I changed my mind; I'm in the mood for Chinese." Dean takes a step towards the door and Hairnet wraps a hand around one of Dean's biceps. Sam is at Dean's side, still as death, and the restaurant part of the truck stop is so quiet he thinks he can actually hear the cook's stomach churn.

Dean's considering pulling his gun, probably just to scare the guy. Sam knows this as sure as he knows that scar behind Dean's right knee. Dean wouldn't _actually_ use it, though. Probably.

Dean's hand makes it to the gun in the back of his pants before Sam's light touch stops him. Dean brings his hand out from behind his back slowly, palm open, and shows it to Hairnet.

"Listen, Cletus, how about we strike a deal? You let go of me right now and we'll leave you with all three of your teeth still in your mouth, okay?"

Hairnet loosens his grip on Dean's arm but doesn't let go.

"You knew us enough to call the cops," Sam starts calmly. "You probably know just how stupid standing in the way of us getting out of here is."

"Just step back and let us walk away, man. There's no shame in looking out for number one." Dean's using his most persuasive voice, the one he thinks gets him all those phones numbers. His hands are open and out past his shoulders, unconsciously mimicking Sam's usual pose when dealing with psychotic murderers and other people who want them dead.

Sam goes for the bad cop approach. "If we're still here when the cops arrive, you _really_ are not going to like it." It falls flatter than he'd like; it's been so long since he's been able to play the hard-ass that he's not used to it anymore. He sounds more like he's pleading instead of coercing.

 _Come on,_ he thinks, _just let us go, just do it._

Hairnet finally lets go of Dean, slowly and warily, like he's waiting for Dean to whip out his gun or sock him. Dean doesn't, but Sam knows it's not for lack of wanting. If they weren't absolutely positive the cops were on the way the odds are that that guy would be on the ground and bleeding. But the cops _are_ on their way and Sam is pulling at his jacket impatiently to get him moving.

It's another day and a half before they stop for food again, and then it's soggy sandwiches from a gas station off the 80: egg salad for Dean and tuna for Sam.

\--

Sam's voice comes thundering out from the woods, "I'm not wiping my ass with my underwear, Dean!"

Dean's leaning against the hood, arms crossed over his chest. "You're the one who couldn't hold it in." He is trying not to be annoyed—really he is—but this is the fourth stop they've had to make in the last hour. They aren't on any particular deadline or anything, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

"We're supposed to have toilet paper!"

 _We_ did _have toilet paper. We_ had _three rolls an hour and a half ago._ "Well, excuse _me_ , Princess, I'm not the one who used it all!"

"Dean!" Dean has no idea how Sam manages to sound so damn whiny and pathetic _and_ angry all at the same time. Especially after Dean _told_ him not to get the tuna. Really, the little shitting crybaby brought it on himself for not listening. Dean never jokes about food, and only rarely about things that could hurt Sam.

"What do you want me to do, man? You want me to leave you here and find a town?"

"No," Sam answers. The anger is completely gone from his voice now and he just sounds pathetic and small. Young. _Dammit._

"I think the nearest place in only about a half-hour up the road, forty-five minutes there and back if I hurry. You sure you don't want toilet paper?"

"Dean! You can't leave me alone here for an hour; I'm in the middle of a forest! Please?"

"Well, what do you want me to do, Sam?"

"I don't know. Something?" _One day_ , he swears, _One day I'm just gonna leave him by the side of the road and that'll be it._ Dean's more likely to start listening to rap.

Dean sighs and trudges back to the trunk, roots around for a few minutes and walks back towards the front of the car. He throws a pair of gray jockeys in the general vicinity of Sam's voice and calls back, "Use mine, I'll get a new pair at the next Wal-Mart."

Sam doesn't say thank you when he finally comes back to the car, but he doesn't complain about the music either.

At least, not for the first five and a half minutes.

\--

It's two hours, five stops, six more pairs of underwear and one undershirt later when Sam and Dean finally arrive at the next town.

Sam sits awkwardly in the car while Dean buys them a room.

Dean puts on a hat and sunglasses and shuffles slowly into the lobby. He keeps his head down, his voice low and tries to act as if he's barely awake. It's only about six at night, but it seems to work.

When the girl at the desk tries to make small talk, and they always do, Dean mumbles something about having the weekend off of work. When she asks what he does, he says the first thing that comes to his mind.

Unfortunately for Dean, the first thing that comes to his mind is, "Stuff." The girl doesn't try to make any more small talk though so Dean isn't _too_ sorry for the implied attitude he gave her.

"Room 1102 is around the back of the building, by the pool, with a _glorious_ and expansive view of the parking lot." She goes to hand him the key and it's nothing but pure habit that has him flashing his biggest smile at her. Her eyes go wide, her jaw drops and her voice actually squeaks out an, "Oh my God!" Before Dean can even begin to think of turning tail and running, she continues. "Oh my God! Oh my God! I _love_ your show! Can I have your autograph?"

Dean has no idea who the hell she thinks he is, but he's never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Well, of course you can! Who should I make it out to?"

\--

Sam immediately heads towards the toilet once they're in the room. Dean brings in their bags and heads to the store for supplies.

He comes back an hour later with five four-packs of Charmin Ultra, two bottles of Pepto Bismal, two packs of jockeys, a bucket, and five small cans of some fancy deodorizer that's supposed to get rid of stank-ass smells, or maybe stank ass-smells.

Dean hasn't told Sam yet, but their last credit card got declined two towns back. After this trip to the store, Dean has one hundred and three dollars left to his name. They're at least two hundred miles from their nearest P.O. Box and there isn't a single pool hall in this whole fucking town. Dean doesn't want to worry Sam just yet, but if he can't figure out a way to get money soon, they're going to be stuck by the side of the road somewhere just waiting for the FBI to come and give them a ride.

When he gets back, Sam is still in the bathroom. Dean grabs a blanket off of what would have been Sam's bed, were he not sick as a damn dog, and drags it and the rest of the supplies into the bathroom. The blanket goes around Sam, who looks like death defrosting as he shivers on the toilet. The bucket goes at his feet and the Pepto on the side of the tub next to him. Dean sprays the deodorizer, ruffles Sam's hair and goes to see what's on HBO.

\--

It's Tuesday night and Sam hasn't shaved since Saturday when he and Dean catch themselves on _America's Most Wanted_. They've finally managed to work up from "fifteen seconds of shame" to their very own segment. Dean thinks of it as a badge of honor. Sam hates if for a bunch of reasons. The biggest one being Dean talking him into growing a beard in an attempt to look less like the pictures of him now splashed all over the country.

Sam's face is red and puffy from where he's been scratching at it for the last two days.

He knows John Walsh is a good guy; he catches killers and baby-rapists and other scum like that. Hell, Sam will even go so far as to say that John Walsh is a great man.

That doesn't stop Sam from having fantasies about kidnapping him and beating him within an inch of his life.

"Stop scratching, dude, you look like a tweaker."

"I can't help it. It itches." Sam scratches harder with his knuckle at a patch by the left side of his mouth. "It's a blurry picture. Why can't I shave?"

"Because I don't wanna strip and get all comfortable and then have to shimmy out of a second-story bathroom window naked. Besides, I thought you liked stubble."

"Yeah, on other—" Sam stops himself suddenly, blushing. He clears his throat and speaks again. "Not on me." Dean chuckles and Sam kicks himself on the inside for giving Dean ammo.

"Sammy's got a thing for the manly men, does he? Likes his _men_ with stubble on 'em, huh?" Dean snickers again and elbows Sam's side. Sam groans, rolls his head back and slouches down until his knees bang up against the dash.

"I hate you so much."

Suddenly, Dean is on him, pushing Sam flat against the seat and climbing on him, legs spread wide over Sam's hips and head bent low. Dean's hands slide along side Sam's face, his fingertips in Sam's hair and his thumbs rubbing along his cheekbones.

Sam tilts his face up towards Dean's, angles up for a kiss and is met with just the barest touch of lips. He feels Dean smirk against his mouth and pull back. "Say it."

" _Dean_ ," Sam protests and makes another move for a kiss. Dean ducks out of the way and pats his brother's face.

"Come on, Sammy." Dean kisses the spot right below Sam's ear, bites lightly at his earlobe. "Just say it. You'll feel _much_ better after you do." He rubs his own stubbled cheek against Sam's neck, then bites a trail of kisses to Sam's mouth. "I promise."

It's been three days since they last kissed and Sam only has so much resolve. "I like—"

"No, say it right."

"I..." _hate you so much right now, Dean._ "Have a thing for manly men. With stubble. And muscles. Big, manly ones. And other manly stuff. Is that good enough?"

"'Manly stuff', huh? You mean like _cocks_ and _balls_ and other 'manly stuff' like that, don't you?" Sam can hear the laughter in Dean's voice; he'd have to be deaf not to, and his stomach tightens and twists, partially from discomfort and partially from something different altogether.

"Either kiss me or move, okay? I'm tired and I don't need to sit here and be made fun—"

Dean cuts Sam off with his lips, his mouth warm and wet over Sam's. Sam's neck is bent upward at an awkward angle and Dean tastes stale, like he hasn't brushed his teeth in days, but neither of those things matter at all.

Dean's hands are fisted in Sam's hair, the grip so tight it's pulling his head back. Sam fumbles with Dean's belt, tries to get it open and off so he can get to work on Dean's pants. Above him, Dean rolls his hips and Sam can't help the pathetic moan that escapes him. He tries to stifle it, since he knows noises like that freak Dean out, but it comes out anyway. Dean breaks the kiss and tries to pull away, breath coming fast and hot. "Dude, you know I hate it when you do that. It's creepy."

Sam doesn't let Dean pull away far. He chases Dean's mouth and refuses to let the kiss break, even after Dean's head thunks against the windshield and causes their faces and noses to mash together painfully. Sam finally gives up on Dean's chastity belt and slides his hand down a little, rubs it over Dean's erection and squeezes.

He breaks the kiss and licks at his lips. All he can think about is having his mouth around Dean's cock, sucking him off. The head of Dean's cock pushing past his lips, going all the way in and down his throat. "God, Dean, I want to suck you off so bad right now, you have no idea."

Dean exhales a shaky, "Fuck," and thrusts against Sam's hand shallowly. He's sweating, twisting in Sam's lap, and it's driving them both insane. "Fuck, Sam, do it. Suck me."

Sam sucks in a wet breath of air and can't bring himself to stifle the whimper that crawls from his throat. All these years later it still kind of amazes him that he can actually, _really_ turn Dean on. The fact that he can make Dean hard, so hard that he's actually telling Sam what to do to him instead of just pushing or guiding like he usually does, sends a shiver up his spine and short-circuits his brain.

Dean is even less patient than his brother and only lasts through another few seconds of fumbling before he swats at Sam's hands. Try as he might, Sam can't stop touching. He settles for sliding his hands around to Dean's ass while Dean works on his belt. Sam can feel Dean's hands between their bodies, moans when Dean's knuckles rub against the seam of his jeans. He squeezes Dean's ass and thrusts up, rubbing his erection against Dean's. A shuddery exhale of air blows over his face as Dean pulls and pushes at his arms, pins them against the back of the seat and kneads lightly at his biceps. "You have to stop that or I'm gonna blow my load right now, man." Sam's hands clench and flex at his sides; it takes most of his willpower to keep from grabbing Dean again and testing out that theory.

Dean grips his brother's arms harder, uses them for leverage as he maneuvers himself off and back towards the steering wheel. It takes a little bit of work but after a few minutes, he's situated: crouched low on the seat with his upper back against the driver's side door. His legs are splayed wide and Sam leans forward immediately, mouth on Dean's exposed neck and hands heading back to Dean's belt.

Sam can't undo the buckle. He wants it so badly his hands are twitching and Dean doesn't even bother to give him a chance. It takes some push and pull but Sam gets himself high enough above his brother to let Dean undo the belt on his own jeans. The muscles in Sam's arms are quivering from the strain of holding himself above Dean at such an awkward angle. Dean finally gets his pants unzipped and Sam's muscles turn to jelly as he watches his brother pull out his dick.

Sam's hovering over Dean, braced on the dashboard and the back of the seat, and Dean's just sitting there: legs spread, cock out, and just waiting for Sam's mouth. It's so hot and so dirty that Sam groans and almost creams his pants right there.

It's like somebody's just opened a package of sour candies in front of him. He gets that weird tick in his jaw, like he can already taste it. Except what Sam's tasting is Dean's cock, because he wants it so fucking bad he can already feel it, hot and heavy against his tongue. His mouth is watering and he can't help but make these small slurping noises every time he swallows. Sam can see the way Dean's legs are shaking, watches as Dean's dick twitches and Sam feels heady, powerful, knowing it's _him_ that's doing this to Dean.

Sam doesn't waste any more time and ducks his head down to take Dean's cock in his mouth. He takes in just the head at first and closes his mouth around it, gives it a firm suck, tasting Dean's precome and reveling in the salt-bitter flavor of it sliding down his throat.

There's a groan from Dean, a loud and guttural noise, and it hits Sam right where it counts. Dean's hands are in Sam's hair now, tight and hard and unrelenting as he guides Sam on his cock, and Sam's head is pushed down until he can feel his brother's cock pushing at the back of his throat, begging him to angle his head just a little bit more. Dean pulls Sam off until he is sucking at the tip almost painfully, desperate not to let go, to keep some kind of connection.

Sam whimpers and since Dean has that sound cataloged and memorized, he loosens his hold so Sam can get more comfortable. His brother is on his knees with an arm beneath one of Dean's still jean-clad legs, the one pulled up over Sam's shoulder. Dean knows from experience that Sam's other hand is between his legs right now, rubbing at his dick through his pants; he would know this even if it weren't the standard, the norm, because the moment Sam's hand squeezes his own erection, he groans around Dean's dick. It sends a ripple up Dean's spine and he thrusts up, hard, until Sam gags and starts to push back.

After a quick breather, Sam goes back to work, sucking hard and swallowing around Dean's dick. "Fuck, Sam," Dean stutters out in warning, not because he's about to come—Sam always, _always_ swallows—but because he doesn't want to choke Sam for a second time when he loses control and starts fucking Sam's mouth again.

Sam sucks harder when his brother comes, swallows around Dean's cock and hardly even gags at all. The taste of Dean's come floods his mouth and it's so incredibly hot, so very much of a turn-on, that he barely has to touch his cock after that before he's coming himself. Sam rocks against his hand and huffs hard. His mouth is still firm on Dean's soft cock and Dean's hands are still buried in his hair.

They just lie there for a moment when it's all done, Dean tugging weakly at Sam's hair until Sam finally pulls off of Dean's cock. He presses his forehead to the sweaty, clammy skin of Dean's abdomen and breathes quick and heavy. After a moment, Sam sluggishly pulls his hands free from under his body and Dean's leg. Sam takes his time and tucks Dean away slowly, leaving small, chaste kisses to his dick and stomach as he does so.

Dean is out cold. Sam can tell by the lax hands still on his head, now just resting there instead of clenching. He buries his face in Dean's crotch, the crease between his thigh and pelvis, and inhales deeply. Dean smells like sweat and Cheetos and mustard. It's disgusting and gross, but it's Dean in all his napkin-hating glory and Sam feels safer in that moment than he has in a while.

\--

Somewhere between five minutes and an hour later, Sam finds himself at the front desk of The Friendship Inn getting a room. His hair is a mess; it's greasy and dirty and sweaty and sticking up in every which way possible. The beard, the very little of it that he has right now, still itches and he swears he can feel the hair actually growing and pushing up through the skin.

Sam can't stop himself from touching his mouth, just rubbing his thumb across his bottom lip. Back and forth, back and forth. He has no idea if it actually is as swollen as he thinks it is, or if he's imagining things, the same way his lips felt red and numb for hours after the first time he kissed Dean.

The guy at the front desk is staring at him and part of his brain knows he should be worrying that he's being recognized but the first thought that goes through his brain is not _oh, God, he's gonna call the cops._ The first thought that goes through Sam's brain is, _oh, God, I just blew my brother twenty feet away from this guy._

The second thought that goes through Sam's head is, _oh, that probably shouldn't be as hot as it is._

"You need a room?"

Sam knows that tone of voice right there very well; it's the standard voice of every "rooms by the hour" employee and most everyone who works graveyard at nearly any motel. It says, very clearly, that they could not _possibly_ be bothered to care less about you or anything you do.

"Yeah, two queens, please." Sam begs the man not to make the joke and very nearly thanks God out loud when he doesn't.

The man, David, asks for his name, ID, credit card, and all the usual information. Sam takes the keycard—classy place here—and thanks the man.

When he walks back to the car, Dean is asleep against the window, drooling on himself and scratching his chest. Sam can't help it; he opens the door and cackles when Dean tumbles out backwards onto the ground.

"What the hell, man?" Dean asks from his sprawl on the asphalt. Sam doesn't feel bad, since Dean didn't hit his head or anything important.

"Up and at 'em, retard, we got a room."

"Fucking ass-faced loser. Next time, just fucking wake me up like a human, okay?"

"Whatever, man. Come on, let's go."

\--

The first thing Dean does when Sam finally manages to get them in the room, stupid fucking door and its stupid fucking key card, is drop his bag on the floor and flop himself down face-first on the bed nearest to the door.

"Don't worry, Dean, I'll get the bags. You just lay there; I know you've had a rough day of doing nothing at all."

Dean doesn't answer; he can't with his face stuffed in the pillow. Instead, he throws an arm up and raises his finger in the Winchester Universal Gesture for _you woke me up when I was asleep. Be glad I'm letting you live right now._

\--

After the first few times they wake up in the middle of the night thinking they've heard something, they take to sleeping fully clothed. Pants, shoes, watches, everything. Their guns are just out of their reach on the nightstand and the knives go back under their pillows.

It almost makes Sam feel nostalgic for when he was little and Dad used to come home from hunts dead tired without any energy to change Sam for bed. Dean would pull off his shoes and take off his own boots and they would crawl under the covers, just like that.

He's never had a pair of pajamas and didn't actually think people really wore them outside of movies and TV. The closest thing he's ever had was when he was little and used to wear one of Dad's shirts to bed when he was sick or Dad was gone. Even at Stanford he slept fully-clothed. Jess used to make fun of him for it, say he was the only person she'd ever seen who, after having sex, would put on underwear, an undershirt, two T-shirts, and pants just to go to sleep.

\--

Dean must have fallen asleep at some point because the next thing he knows, he has a damp and heavy Sam lying across his back. Dean doesn't remember getting undressed, but he's nearly naked under the blanket so he figures Sam must have found a way to apologize for that _incredibly_ rude wake-up earlier by making sure Dean didn't roll over onto his keys or Dad's journal in the middle of the night. Because, and Dean speaks from experience when he says this, that stings like a son of a bitch.

Sam's leg is hitched over his body and his arm is wrapped around his chest and trapped against the bed. His face is pressed against Dean's neck and Dean only barely resists the urge to shake his head and knock Sam's wet hair off of him.

"Nightmare?" he asks quietly.

Sam snuggles up closer to Dean, noses at his back. "No."

"You sure?" Dean feels Sam's lips against his back, between his shoulder blades and takes it as a yes. He knows his brother, and Sam isn't this affectionate after he has a nightmare. When he does, he just grabs and clings, squeezes him until Dean swears that he can feel his ribs cracking and breaking. They don't, of course, because Sam's too careful for that.

His brother murmurs against his back and presses another noisy, damp kiss there. Dean figures he has about half of Sam's weight on him right now, his shoulder aches and the muscle in one of his legs is cramping and begging to be stretched, it's not hard to breathe but it's definitely not the most comfortable thing in the world. Dean fucking hates the way Sam clings in his sleep, like he's never realized that once you don't fit your Underoos anymore you aren't allowed to sleep directly on your brother—or anyone really. It's annoying and girly and fucking _clingy_ and Dean really hates it. More than he hates Sam's so called "taste" in music.

Dean is asleep in minutes, like always.

\--

"Has your mouth ever actually watered for something?"

Dean looks up from the gun he's cleaning on his bed. "What?"

Sam is lying on his bed near the door. He's got his two pillows from the car and the two from his bed propped underneath him between his back and the headboard. He's typing on the computer but pauses for a moment to look over at Dean. "The commercial. It said they had 'mouth-watering burgers.' I don't think my mouth has ever watered for anything."

"Your mouth was watering pretty good for my cock last night." Dean grabs his crotch and smirks at Sam.

"Did you know that your body produces excess saliva to coat your throat and mouth so that it'll protect them from stomach acid before you vomit?"

Dean scoffs and throws back a lame, "Whatever," before going back to his job.

\--

There are days when all Sam wants to do is _rage_.

Days when all he wants to do is kick and scream and throw one of those temper tantrums he remembers being told he'd never thrown when he was little.

It's after those close calls. Not the normal ones where one or both of them almost die on a hunt, those days are different because he knows they won't die like that--he doesn't know how he knows; he just knows.

It's after the times they almost get caught, when they _do_ get arrested that he feels the anger boil inside of him.

It's the times when they _have_ to bunk down in the car because John Walsh has a hard-on for them that rivals pedophiles and they can't risk trying to get a motel room.

It's after every time Dean goes three rounds with a half-dozen angry cops and Sam has to get them as far away as fast as possible and then clean of the worst of Dean's wounds.

It's after every fucking time that Sam has to drag Dean into the hospital and holds his breath until the doctor comes out and deigns to tell him that his brother _doesn't_ have a skull fracture but they would like to keep him overnight, "just in case."

It's those days when all Sam wants to do is shake his brother and scream and yell, "Why doesn't this bother you? Why are you so goddamned calm? When they catch you they're going to kill you—when I fuck up, they're going to _kill_ you!"

Those are the days when Sam feels every bit the PMSing woman Dean says he is, because he can't seem to decide whether he wants to punch Dean right in his big, stupid face or curl up into him and cry like he's seven again.

\--

When Sam finally gets the balls to do it, they're in a restaurant in Santa Cruz at one in the morning and that fact alone is so funny Sam almost wants to kill himself from the irony of it.

Santa Cruz and Palo Alto are two of the only places in the country where Sam can name streets other than the numbered ones. They're two of the only places Sam has ever been in or around long enough to get recommendations for places to eat.

When Sam was in college, he dated a guy who lived and worked in Santa Cruz. Sam more or less lived with him for an entire summer and made his way up on the weekends to visit for months after classes started back up.

Jess lived in Santa Cruz. Or, at least, her family lived there, probably still does. He spent a Christmas break and a dozen or so weekends with her up here.

They're sitting in the Saturn Café, a gimmicky theme restaurant, when it happens. It's the perfect place once Sam thinks about it; he's fairly certain two men kissing would be no big deal in this place, if the lack of confirmed gender of pretty much all of the waiters, or waitresses, is anything to go by.

The café itself is one big space theme, of course, and each booth has garish, bright red vinyl seats and thick tabletops, dioramas really, with toys or board games or some other theme completely separate of the rest of the restaurant and the other tables. Their table has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joes and Barbies with big, crimped hair under the glass.

"Hey, check it out, they got your favorite." Dean points to the Donatello in the table locked in combat with a half melted Treasure Troll. "Want me to nab him for you?"

"No! Dean, you can't." Sam catches himself before he can complain about stealing. They _are_ paying for this meal with a credit card stolen out of an unlocked Mercedes. "You can't break the table here. What will we eat on?"

"We've got laps."

"Thanks, but that's okay. I haven't played with dolls in years."

"Dude, they're action figures."

"Sure, _action figures_. You know, the fact that you still play with your Boba Fett doll doesn't make you a girl. All that Bonne Bell lip gloss you wear—that's what makes you a girl."

"It's chapstick, asshole. That Carmex crap burns."

"It comes in a little glass jar with tiny pink hearts all over it and it makes your lips all shiny. It's lip gloss. Seriously, Dean, it looks like they're covered in c-c—" Sam's brain suddenly comes to a complete, stuttering halt and he feels his face get hot. He clears his throat, one, two, three times before speaking again. "Food. That's what, that, we, yeah. Food. I think I'm in the mood for some chicken alfredo. How about you?"

Dean smirks at him and it takes everything in Sam not to slide under the table and hide. To his luck, Dean lets it go. "I'm thinking western burger. Onion rings, barbeque sauce, bacon. Mm. So good." They spend a few minutes looking at their menus, trying to decipher the somewhat illegible font choice. "What the fuck?"

"Does that say tuno melt?"

"No! No more tuna melts."

"It wasn't a tuna melt. And it's not tuna, anyway."

"Tun _a_ , tun _o_ , whatever. You get it and I swear, you can shit your pants _walking_ back to the motel."

"I'm not gonna order it, I don't even know what it is."

"You better not."

"I'm _not_."

"It doesn't look like they have your chicken alfredo."

"I'll just get the chicken tenders, then." Sam has to look twice at the menu to make sure he isn't seeing things. "Why is chicken in quotation marks?"

"What the fuck is fakin bacon?" _Oh, man. I am never,_ ever _going to hear the end of this._ "You brought us to a vegetarian place? What is wrong with you, you hippie?"

"It's not that bad." _Damn you, Evan, I'll find you and kill you for this, you bastard._ Sam should've known better than to come here. Jess's friend Evan is the one who recommended it to him. That bastard never liked him to begin with. _Overprotective, my ass._ "You could get some ravioli or something."

"Their fucking burgers are made out of grains and nuts. Grains. And. Nuts. Why are we wasting money on grains and nuts when we can go outside and eat dirt? It'll taste just the same. Hell, it'll probably even taste _better_."

Dean starts in on the ranting and Sam tunes him out within seconds; he's heard his brother's "damn hippies are ruining the world" speech enough times already by now. Now that Sam knows this is a vegetarian place, the dirty looks they've been getting make sense. He knew it wasn't the fact that they're two guys, because that almost never get those looks in a restaurant, but he couldn't understand why they were getting death glares from all the other patrons.

Now he understands, though, because Dean is wearing his leather jacket. And beyond that, he is ranting and raving about hippies and meat and, if he sticks to his usual script, "whiny little girly men." Sam never really realized before exactly just how much of a redneck his brother really is. They could probably wear "Bush/Cheney '04" shirts and get better looks then they're getting right now.

He doesn't know if it's the fact that everyone in the whole place probably thinks both him and Dean are misogynistic, homophobic assholes or the fact that Dean rarely looks hotter than when he's being a loud and completely unapologetic asshole but Sam can't _not_ lean across the booth and kiss him right then.

When Sam first came up with his brilliant idea, several states and weeks ago, the plan was just a quick kiss: chaste, fast, and nothing but lip. It's more of a long peck than an actual kiss.

That is not an option right now, though; it's not even in the same galaxy.

Sam leans across the table and grabs Dean by his shirt; pulls him up and over; close enough so that Sam can catch his mouth in a kiss. Dean's lips are soft against Sam's own chapped ones and they taste faintly like fruit. Sam can't help but laugh a little into the kiss. The chapstick, or lip gloss, or whatever it actually is seems to be doing its job pretty well.

Dean doesn't seem to like being laughed at while kissing—and really, who would—and punishes Sam by forcefully taking control of the kiss. His right hand is at the back of Sam's head, fingers lightly digging into Sam's skull as he forces Sam to angle his head, tilts it to the side and licks his way further into Sam's mouth. Sam closes his eyes and lets the rest of the world and their eyes and their whispers just fall away from him.

He doesn't know how long they kiss or how borderline pornographic it is; he only knows that the one thing keeping him and his brother from rutting against each other like dogs in heat is the table between them, and even then only barely. Eventually, Dean pulls back. He keeps his forehead pressed to Sam's and his mouth only as far from Sam's as their noses force.

Sam's eyes are still closed and he can't help but flinch when he hears their waiter—or waitress—ask, in a voice that sounds far more amused than Sam can deal with right now, if they need more time or if they're ready to order. The tip of Dean's tongue dances across the bottom of Sam's lower lip quickly and Sam swears that he's blushed more in the last half hour than he has in his entire life.

"Two bowls of mac and cheese," Dean starts off, speaking directly into the small amount of space between their mouths. "A pitcher of PBR, a chocolate shake with Oreo and banana, and a Big Bang and two Chocolate Madnesses to go with the check. You want anything else, Sammy?" Sam bites his lip to keep himself from blurting out anything stupid, like a request for Dean to fuck him over the table _right_ this second. "That's it. We're good now."

Sam finally opens his eyes but doesn't look at Dean. He doesn't look at anyone around them, either, despite feeling their eyes on him. His eyes are focused on his hand, still clenched in Dean's shirt. His voice is a strained whisper when he finally speaks. "That was... embarrassing."

Dean obviously, and predictably, has no such problems with it. His voice is strong and cocky when he speaks. It's also a few decibels louder than Sam would've preferred right about now. "Fuck embarrassing—that was hot, man. Who knew you had it in you?"

Sam leans back a little. Not far, though, because Dean doesn't let him sit all the way down. "Everyone's staring at us now."

"Damn straight they are. We are two fucking red-hot pieces of ass! People pay good money to see this shit, man, twenty bucks a pop."

Dean's hand is still in his hair, but slipped down towards the nape of his neck, rubbing lightly with his fingers as his thumb sweeps gently right behind Sam's ear. "You should come over to this side of the booth, man." His smile is wicked and sharp. "You'd like it over here."

Sam knows what will happen if they're both on the same side of the booth, and while he's trying to get himself used to the idea of public displays of affection, there's a big line between making out with Dean in the middle of a busy restaurant and trading handjobs with his big brother in the middle of a busy restaurant. "Yeah, I'm really not going _anywhere_ for at least a few minutes."

"Pussy."

"If that were true I wouldn't have this problem now, would I?"

\--

"Damn it, Sam, stop moving the fucking light!"

Dean barely resists turning around and glaring at Sam over his shoulder. There's engine grease smeared on his hands, and he knows there has to be some on his cheek or forehead or somewhere else on his face where he wiped away sweat or scratched without thinking about it. He's tired and in a bad mood because they're stranded on the fucking highway in the middle of the night, and he still hasn't figured why the fuck the car won't start. Except for the possibility that he's pissed her off somehow and now she's pouting at him, but he can't for the life of him figure out what he might have done or how the fuck to fix it now.

"My arm is starting to get tired." That and his little brother is being a whiny little bitch. Not that Dean exactly blames him; they're both tired, and Dean knows he'd much rather be pretty much anywhere but here right now.

"Well, if you'd stop moving the light I might be able to figure out what's wrong." Dean tries to be patient—he really does—but he still can't help the annoyance he knows is creeping into his voice.

"The car is old, Dean. Maybe she just wanted to sleep," Sam suggests helpfully. And Dean's sure that's exactly why she's not moving -- she's tired. That and this whole damned, godforsaken state. Or not, since she's never given him trouble over such a stupid reason as being _tired_ , especially not when Dean himself is exhausted. Besides, she might be old, older than Dean, almost a half-century, but she's far from worn-out. Then again, Sam's just trying to get Dean to give up for the night, adding, "Like we should be doing."

"We're not sleeping by the side of a highway near someplace called Skull City." It's like the beginning of a bad horror film. Dean readily, and vocally, admits that things in their line of work rarely happen exactly the way they do in the movies, but he's not stupid enough to go ahead and try to invite something to go and prove him wrong.

"Because it's smarter to stand outside in the open by the side of the highway in Skull City."

"Of course."

\--

"Dean." Sam draws the name out for several whiny syllables.

"For the love of _fuck_ , Sam, I'm almost done. Just give me five more minutes."

"You said that an hour ago. I haven't been slept in two days." Sam's head drops and he lays his forehead in between Dean's shoulder blades. He lets his weight shift until Dean starts to push back and they hit that perfect balance.

Dean laughs lowly. "Been slept?"

"Slept. Been to sleep. Whatever." Sam sighs into Dean's back and nuzzles it. "See, my brain isn't even going like it's supposed to anymore. My arms hurt and my head hurts and I," as if on cue he yawns; big and loud and warm against Dean's spine. "I want to go to sleep."

"If you would shut your trap and quit bugging me for five minutes, I'd have her fixed."

Sam's right hand is balancing the flashlight over Dean's right shoulder, his left hand tangled in the bottom of Dean's shirts and trapped against his stomach. He leans his head on Dean's shoulder and noses at the juncture of his neck, huffing lightly. "Dean, I'm tired. I wanna go to sleep."

"I heard you eight seconds ago, the first time you said that. What are you, six?"

Sam lets out a pathetic whimper that is usually reserved for small children who haven't had their naps or, in this and many other cases, Sam Winchester after he's gone more than two days without sleep. Dean sighs and cracks his neck to the right. Sam slides his face down until his closed eyes are pressed against the juncture. His breath is warm and moist on the collars of Dean's shirts.

"Half an hour. If I don't have her fixed by then; I'll get out the salt and kick the bench back."

"Pinky swear?" _Not six; five. Five and a half maybe. At the absolute most._

"Pinky swear," Dean says.

Half an hour later, to the minute, Dean closes the hood with a sigh. "Every _single_ time without fail. I fucking hate Utah." Just once he would like to get through the state without it trying to break his car.

"D'ja her d't," Sam slurs against Dean's neck and makes a slurping noise, sucking back the drool sliding down the side of his face.

"What?"

"I asked," Sam's voice is more coherent, if still slow, "if you heard that."

"Heard what?" Dean strains his ears but hears nothing more than his and Sam's breathing.

"That."

"I don't—" He hears it then, a low rumble that sounds almost like... "Was that a sheep?"

Sam's answer is mumbled noises that Dean takes to mean, "I don't know; my head won't turn because it's currently buried in your neck. Also, I want to bathe you in my slobber like the yipping little bitch that I am."

Dean hears the noise again, louder, amplified and, if he's not mistaken, angrier. He tries to turn around to see what the problem is but is promptly struck by the realization that the two hundred and sixty-eight pounds of sleepy brother on his back moments ago is now two hundred and sixty-eight pounds of unconscious brother.

"Oh, you tubby motherfucker, come on, you can't be asleep right now." Dean tugs and pulls at Sam's arms and hair in an attempt to wake him up. It's no use, though; Sam is dead to the world. "Of course, the _one_ time that I actually need you for something."

Dean hitches Sam up on his back, high enough to lift his Sideshow Bob feet off the ground and maneuver them both to see what the hell the noise behind them is.

He almost drops Sam flat on his ass. There in front of him are hundreds, maybe thousands, of sheep. And not just normal sheep; no, it couldn't be that. It had to be flickering sheep. _Ghost_ sheep.

"What the—"

 _Baah._ That fucking sound cuts him off again and this time he also gets the added visual of a thousand ghost sheep flickering into half-rotted bones with decaying meat falling off of them.

Dean doesn't know how the hell he does it but he manages to get him and Sam into the car before the sheep, goddamned fucking _ghost sheep_ , start to charge. Sam is exhausted and still asleep for the most part. His jaw is slack and his eyes are hooded and barely open so his body doesn't think to flinch back when the sheep start climbing up and over the car.

Dean is just staring out the window. He can't help it. "I didn't know sheep could jump."

"They jm'p 'ver logs, bu' only, only when y' n'mber 'em." Dean cocks his head and Sammy's asleep again, chin on his chest with a thin line of drool dried to his cheek.

And then suddenly, of course, the windshield starts to crack. Dean throws himself over Sam, tackles him sideways into the seat and curls over his brother. He's almost positive that the windshield isn't actually going to break but he hitches his jacket over their heads anyway, just in case.

"You okay, Sammy?" Sam's only response is to shift under Dean and roll his head to the side. Dean can't stop the small huff of laughter at the absurdity of the last ten minutes. He shifts around to make himself more comfortable, arm braced against the passenger's side door, forehead on forearm and mouth against Sam's forehead. "If you wake up screaming, I'm tearing out your voicebox."

\--

The moment Dean woke up without morning wood he knew the day was going to be shit.

He just had no idea how literal that was.

It's hot and windy and four in the afternoon. Dean's been awake for nine hours already, Sam for almost a half an hour.

Dean's been waiting eight hours for Bobby's friend in Colorado to find someone near them who is willing to tow them without turning them in for a reward.

Eight hours. Apparently every single person on this Earth really _is_ a greedy bastard.

But that's not even the worst part.

"It's not that bad, Dean." Dean has no response for that. He is currently sitting by the side of the road with his head in his hands and cursing the state of Utah, and everyone in it, under his breath. "You can wash it off. And the dents should come out easy. And the windshield and battery should only be like, what? Two hundred bucks?" For the battery, maybe. "And, I mean, all we need is like some antiheat and we can get the hell out of here."

Dean's head shoots up, eyebrows reaching for his hairline. " _Antiheat_?"

"Yeah. So we don't overheat again?" Dean's sure that Sam must be joking but the fucker has the audacity to look at him like _he's_ the idiot.

"When we get into town, I'm buying you a helmet."

\--

"What'd you say happened last night?"

"I've said it nine fucking times, Sam. I don't care if you believe me or not."

"Yes, you do."

\--

"So we were really attacked by angry sheep spirits?"

"They left their ghost shit all over my girl, what do you think?"

"Are you sure it was sheep, though?"

"No, I think maybe it was ten thousand midgets in sheep suits."

"What would piss off sheep?"

"Lamb chops? Lonely farmers? Scottish dudes?"

"You're going to hell," Sam states, as if it's actually boring him to say. "What would make a sheep so angry that it would leave ectoplasm behind?"

"It wasn't _a_ sheep. It was a ton of them."

"Same question, magnified. Whatever."

\--

Fixed dents in 1967 Chevy Impala (including labor and price gouging): $8,570.

New windshield for a 1967 Chevy Impala (including more labor and even more price gouging): $653.

New car battery: $110.

Two gallons of water: $1.25.

Hotel room (two Queens): $59.67 (per night).

Air conditioning, television, clean blankets, fluffy pillows and beds big enough for one giant and one Gigantor to fully stretch out on: Priceless.

Some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Leroy Jenkins' credit card.

\--

"Thanks."

"Man, I don't see why you bother with the act. Just get a fucking milkshake and stop faking."

"Did y—"

"'Course I did." Dean drops a small paper bag on the table and straddles the chair across from Sam. "You find anything?" Sam nods.

"Okay, so." Sam reaches in the bag and breaks a piece of coffee cake and a sandwich in half, hands the larger of one and smaller of the other to Dean. "The website says, 'On April 12, 1968, several thousand sheep in Skull Valley were killed by VX gas,' that's nerve gas, 'released in a test from the nearby Dugway Proving Ground, as noted in the Stephen King novel _The Stand_.'"

"That was real?" Dean sounds surprised.

Sam looks up at Dean mid-bite and doesn't bother to try and cover his food-filled mouth as he speaks. "You read _The Stand_?"

"I read," Dean says, sounding vaguely offended.

"You hate Stephen King."

His older brother chuckles, giving Sam a crooked smirk. "No, _you_ hate Stephen King. _I_ think he writes great comedies."

"Whatever, it doesn't matter. We have to figure out how we're gonna get rid of them."

"What do you mean 'get rid of them'? They're sheep on a stretch of dirt near a town with thirty-one people in it."

"So animals don't deserve to rest in peace, too?"

"Oh, you have _got_ to be shitting me."

" _Dean_."

" _Sam_." Dean's mocking him, imitating the exact tone of voice Sam uses when he's trying to annoy Dean into submission. It always throws Sam, to have the irritating little brother voice turned back on him.

"Dean—"

"I know my name, dude, you can stop repeating it now." Sam shoots Dean a look and Dean has to keep himself from suggesting a laxative.

"Just because they don't walk on two legs doesn't mean—"

"Okay, whatever, Sammy, you win. Sheep should go to animal heaven. That doesn't mean we're gonna be the ones to send 'em there."

"Who else will? It's not like anyone else around here knows how."

"I don't know if you've noticed this, but we're on an Indian reservation right now, dude. You may not remember this, but on reservations there are the tribal police and the Feds. We're white. That means when we get arrested for desecration of Indian land or loitering or something, they're going to walk three feet to the left and bring the FBI right to us."

"People could die."

"It's sheep."

"They could still die."

"People die every day."

"Kids could die."

"There aren't kids for a hundred miles around here."

"People go on vacation."

"In January?" Dean can see Sam set his jaw. Sam's arms cross over his chest as he leans back in the booth stiffly.

"Yes."

Dean just rolls his eyes and goes back to reading the paper. Sam doesn't even bother trying to steal bites off Dean's half of the food.

\--

"What about Spiderman?" Sam asks suddenly in the middle of a commercial break. It's a Thursday and they only have another two and a half days before they have to be on the road and somewhere that doesn't get America's Most Wanted.

"What about him?" Dean flips the channel in an attempt to find something on besides shitty talk shows. Jerry, Maury, Montel, Starting Over. Fucking daytime TV.

"He got bit by a radioactive spider and got spider powers." Dean waits for more, but apparently, that was it.

"And?" Dean prompts. He knows there has to be more to this argument; Sam never comes to a fight anything less than over-prepared.

"And? You don't want people walking around with... sheep powers or anything, do you?" _What?_

"Nerve gas, Sam, that's how they died. Nerve gas is not the same as radioactive crap."

"The government is trying to get the okay to start dumping radioactive waste here, though. If they do, then who knows what'll happen to the sheep spirits? They might bite people when they're corporeal and then those people could get radioactive sheep spirit powers or become weresheep or something like that."

Dean stares at Sam for the length of an entire commercial break and part of Montel's interview with a doctor who was once a kidnapped teenage prostitute (and survived). It's possibly the worst logic he's ever heard. He wonders if he should point out to Sam that Spiderman was a _comic book character_ and that things like that don't really happen. Then again, given their line of work...

He settles for asking, "Did you snort Pixie Stix again?"

"Dean!"

"Shut up." Dean sighs and rubs at his forehead. "Is it really that important to you?"

Sam answers back instantly, "Yes."

"Why?" As far as they can find nobody has been killed by the sheep, no one has been hurt by them. A few cars seem to come through battered like theirs is every few months but that's about it. Dean cannot figure out why Sam is so fucking adamant about this.

"It just is."

There is a long silence after that. The television blares on and Montel turns into one of the ten-thousand judge shows on TV.

That's really the only thing that could make Dean do it. Not Sam's brilliant, absolutely ridiculous Spiderman logic, not all the babbling that amount to _but sheep are people, too._ Just the fact that for some stupid, insane reason, this is important to Sam.

"Just so you know, I have no idea how the fuck we're going to do this. They were killed by nerve gas and I don't think it would be a good idea to light their bones on fire. We might have to consecrate the land or smudge it or something."

Dean pretends not to see the blinding smile on Sam's face.

\--

They're standing naked in a fucking field in the middle of the night, and it's maybe three degrees above freezing. The dirt under his feet is cold. His toes are cold. He still doesn't see why he couldn't at least wear his boots. They've got shotguns sitting out on the closed trunk of the car, but without anything on him, Dean feels naked. Of course, he _is_ naked, but he feels perfectly secure without his clothes when he's got a gun or a knife in easy reach. This is different.

He's also really fucking cold.

"Is it really necessary for us to be naked for this?"

"That's what the site said. Do you really wanna have to do this again 'cause we dressed wrong?"

"Yeah, well, hurry it up, man. I'm getting cold out here." Dean's pretty sure his balls are shriveling because they're freezing, too. A glance downwards confirms his suspicions, and he stifles a groan.

Sam looks far too amused by this for his own good. "I can see that." It's not really much of a consolation, but at least Sam's are, too.

"Shut up and keep mixing that virgin goat blood, okay?" he snaps, reaching down to place a protective hand over his cock.

Fuck, it's _cold_.

\--

They're in some random town in Virginia with nine consonants and two vowels in its name when they get separated. Sam is at the store eighty feet away from Dean when it happens. He doesn't even realize he's being stared at until the cop has the gun to his head.

He still doesn't know how that officer had managed to see his gun; all his shirts and jackets are long and he knows better than to bend over while armed. It doesn't matter, though, because one second Sam has a couple of two-liters in his hands and the next he is being ducked into the back of a squad car.

It only takes him three days to talk his way out of jail. One of the things Sam loves about small towns is that a lot of them either just don't bother with fingerprinting or don't have the ability to get them back in less than a week.

The town has only about two or three thousand people. There's no hotel and the cops know what Sam looks like now, obviously, so he can't stay. He wouldn't even if he could though, Dean's long gone by now and Sam is on a time-table.

Dean's got the fucking car so Sam has to hoof it north to the next town. It takes him a day and a half to get there. It would've been shorter but there was a roadblock at the edge of town and he had to ditch his newly acquired Buick La Crosse and walk the rest of the seventeen miles to the next hole in the wall.

It's bigger, much bigger than the last. Sam spends a day trying to find the car and fails miserably. That night, he finds a phone book at the local Circle K, calls the first motel, and asks for Rockford.

Sam is man enough to admit that he very nearly burst into tears, manly ones like Dean cries, when the woman on the other line said there was no one there by that name.

He spends the night walking around, awake and scared, fearing for the worst.

Sometime around nine the next morning Sam is dead on his feet at a grocery store when it finally hits him. Baltimore. They changed their meet up after fucking _Baltimore_.

Sam heads to the customer service desk and asks for a phone book. He flips to the Motels section and counts three up from the very last entry. It takes him almost ten minutes to remember what the last name of the guy from _Nightstalker_ is but when he finally does the man on the other line connects him to room 415. Sam lets it ring three times, hangs up, redials, and lets it ring five more times.

\--

When Sam arrives at the motel, the Rose Skye Motor Lodge, he goes straight to room 415. Shave and a haircut, plus three kicks, two quick and one short, get him an open door and a very relieved brother.

Sam steps in and before the door is even closed, Dean's hands are on him: face, neck, chest, shoulders, arms, and torso. When Dean is satisfied that he's okay, it's Sam's turn to make sure Dean is really here and alive.

He slips a hand into his brother's hair, pulls him in for a kiss, mouths sliding together. Dean's hands are pulling at his shirt, untucking it and sliding a hand down the back of Sam's pants in between the underwear and his skin.

Sam walks Dean backwards to the bed—a king for once, he notices—and only stops when the backs of Dean's knees hit the bed and he starts to wobble. "Hi."

"Hi? You stopped to say _hi_? Why the fuck are you speaking?"

That is a very fine question, and instead of answering it, Sam leans back into the kiss and eases them back on the bed. Well, he tries to ease them back onto the bed. Dean goes down like a bag of bricks and Sam follows right after him hard enough to knock the air right out of Dean's chest.

Dean barely has enough time to grab in another breath before Sam's mouth is on his again, frantic and wet, sloppy in its urgency. Their arms bump and tangle together as they desperately try to get each other's shirts off, and they would probably have a lot better luck if either one of them could manage to take their hands off of the other long enough to get the shirts higher than their underarms. They pull and tug uselessly another few times before they give up, give in and just start clawing at each other's skin. Dean's bitten-off nails dig into Sam's shoulder and ass as he grips and pulls Sam against him, thrusts up and breaks the kiss to bite at Sam's lip. "Fuck, Sam, come on, I can take it."

Sam maneuvers his way between Dean's legs, shoves them open and settles in tight against Dean, one arm wrapped around him, grinding his erection hard against Dean's until it almost hurts. He shifts up, one hand wrapped uncomfortably under Dean to pull him close and tight and the other on the bed to brace himself as he fucks against Dean. And that's the only way to describe it, _fucking_ against Dean, hard and fast, desperate.

He has to break their kissing; he can't concentrate like that when he fucks, clothes or no clothes. He's never been able to. Sam buries his face in Dean's neck, pants and kisses, licks at the sweat and suck at it half-heartedly as Dean clutches at him and curses, "Fuck, Sam, harder, _harder_! Please, come on, please, I know you can do it, _please_."

Sam loves it when Dean begs.

Sam arches his back until his muscles nearly lock in place. He thrusts against his brother quicker, harder, and then he feels Dean's teeth in his neck as he shudders and bucks up hard. Two, three times and Dean is done for, collapsing boneless against the bed. That's all fine and dandy for Dean, but Sam's still hard and fucking air right now.

"Dean? _Dean_? Please don't be asleep. Dean?"

But Dean is dead to the world and Sam is still hard and aching. He doesn't get up or lean back or anything like that; he's too far gone and Dean is still Dean, whether he's awake or not. Sam takes advantage of Dean's unconscious state, grabbing one limp hand and threading their fingers together. He grinds against him, closes his eyes, and buries his face in the side of his brother's neck as he comes in his pants.

Sam is tired, so very tired, but he knows if he falls asleep in his briefs with them all wet like they are right now, he's going to be bitchy and uncomfortable whenever it is that he wakes back up. He strips off his jeans and his briefs, balls them up and throws them towards the bathroom, too tired to get off the bed. Sam works on Dean's jeans next and he has them halfway down the legs before he realizes Dean's belt is nowhere to be seen. He laughs so hard right then that he almost wakes Dean from his post-coital coma. Lucky for them both, Dean just scratches at his wet jockeys and tries to kick a leg out. Sam gets Dean's pants off and tosses them in the same directions as his a moment ago. Dean's underwear go the same route in a few moments, once Sam's done using them to clean the come off of them both.

He debates trying to get Dean up long enough to get the comforter off the bed but decides against it. The bolt on the door is locked and the chain is on. It's not that cold in the room and, most importantly, Sam is fucking _tired_. He crawls up over Dean and makes himself comfortable with an arm and leg over his brother and his head on Dean's chest.

The last thing Sam notices as he falls asleep is one of Dean's hands on his ass, just lying there lazily as the chest under Sam's head rumbles.

\--

When Sam wakes up later that afternoon, he's been stripped of his two outer shirts and jacket. He's also gained a pair of clean briefs and his blanket, the soft electric blue one Dean stole for him from The Comfort Eagle in North Carolina last year. Dean hates that blanket more than Bon Jovi, but he knows how much Sam loves it and Sam knows that that, along with the underwear and shirts, are Dean's way of apologizing for last night.

Dean is a very stupid man if he thinks that's all it will take to make them even.

Sam stretches, scratches himself, and gets out of bed. Dean's standing in front of the sink outside of the bathroom, fully-clothed and brushing his teeth. Sam can't help the small burst of pride that blooms in his chest when Dean catches sight of him in the mirror and immediately starts to choke on his toothpaste. Sam almost calls him a pervert—he _did_ just lose brain function seeing Sam in a t-shirt and tighty-whities—but stops himself at the last minute. He's annoyed at Dean right now, but he's not a sadist. He knows where the line is.

Sam doesn't bother with a _good morning_. "Is that my toothbrush?"

Dean mumbles something around the toothbrush, takes it out, spits, and tries again. "Does it matter?" Sam just shrugs, because it really doesn't.

"You're a bad person, you know?"

Dean spits again and rinses his mouth out, cups his hands and drips water down the front of his shirt. He's not ignoring him, Sam knows, he's just anal as all get-out about his teeth.

"It's not like I got up and left or anything." Dean squeezes some more toothpaste on the brush and hands it to Sam. "I hadn't slept in two days because of your sorry ass."

Sam's got the toothbrush in _his_ mouth now, so saying anything in response to that isn't an option. Nonetheless, Dean is fluent in Thermometer and that's the base language that Toothbrush comes from, so actual words are not needed by Sam, only a series of noises and eyebrow movements.

"I was _not_ worried. I just... wanted to know if I could throw out your clothes yet." Sam jabs himself in the throat, scoffing around his toothbrush.

Dean is silent for the rest of the time Sam brushes his teeth; all he does is stare at Sam quietly. Sam finishes and leans back against the wall to the bathroom. Neither of them say anything for a long time; it's a staring contest and they both know it. First one to break is the weak one, the wuss, the girl.

Dean breaks first and it throws Sam. He shakes his head and bites his bottom lip for a moment. When he speaks his voice is hoarse and low, it has a desperate, pleading quality to it. "You have _got_ to stop doing this to me, Sammy."

Sam looks down. He knows it's his fault this time; he was stupid and he wasn't paying attention.

"I didn't—I don't do it on purpose, Dean. It's not like I like," _being away from you_ , "leaving you alone." Dean flinches. It's small but it's just enough for Sam to catch it. Sam wonders if there will ever be a time when he can say something like that without Stanford looming over their heads like a giant storm cloud. "Someone has to be here to show you how to hack in to all the porn sites. God knows you can't do it on your own." It's a lame attempt at humor, even by his standards, weak and half-hearted, but as much as he craves these talks, needs them, he knows how incredibly fucked up his big brother gets when he goes missing.

Sam knows Dean has been beating himself to Hell and back since the moment he realized that something had happened. He figures that Dean deserves a break now, after two and a half days of pure shit.

But just because Sam gives Dean an out this time, though, it doesn't mean he doesn't want to talk. It just means next time Dean will owe him and he'll know it.

"Please," Dean mocks. "You're the only person on the planet who can't find porn on the net by himself." He is at least a good two feet away from Sam, standing at the far edge of their personal bubble.

"Yeah, well, I don't usually need porn with you around."

Sam curls his fingers into Dean's pockets and pulls him closer, until they're almost nose-to-nose, chests barely touching.

\--

Five days later, they're in another random "city" on the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee in a room with two single beds and a bird theme.

Fake peanut-buttered pinecones hang from the ceiling, and the "curtain" that separates the room from the door is, in reality, just a lot of hummingbird feeders strung together, bright red liquid painting the room a grotesquely bloody color every time the door is opened. There are robins on the pillows and swallows on the sheets—something Dean hasn't stopped laughing about the entire time in this room—and at least nine kinds of birds Dean can't identify lining the walls. The bathroom is just best not to be mentioned at all; there are birds hanging from the fucking ceiling that watch you while you take a dump. Dean hasn't been able to piss outside of the shower in two days.

It's somewhere around two in the morning and they're both tired from being chased out of a warehouse by a couple of overeager rent-a-pigs. Not that Dean will ever admit to being tired, of course.

Dean is the absolute picture of contentment as he lies on his bed. His hands are folded under his head, his legs are crossed at the ankle, his eyes are closed and a relaxed smirk graces his face as he yells for Sam to, "Hurry the fuck up! Some of us actually want to use the shower for more than just to jerk off, dude." Dean is positive that he isn't actually all that tired but he must have drifted off because the next thing he knows, the shower is off and Sam is a heavy weight on his stomach. He's fully dressed—minus three out of four of his shirts—and if not for the wet hair plastered to his forehead, Dean wouldn't know Sam had just taken a shower.

Sam's head is bowed low, hiding his face as he pushes Dean's shirt, rucks it up above his chest and lets his fingers glide over the skin as he slides himself lower. They've always had their own language completely separate from their father and everyone else; they've always been able to speak with nods and looks and little waves and little or no words at all. This is no different. They've been doing this for long enough that everything is automatic; Sam might as well be an extension of Dean—a taller, geekier extension with horrible taste in music—but an extension nonetheless. So, when Sam starts to slide down, Dean knows to bend his knees before Sam even leans back.

Dean's got his hands high on Sam's thighs, pushing them wide and thumbing at the inseam while Sam focuses his gaze on his own hands moving over Dean's chest and stomach. He feels Sam's fingers dig into the soft flesh of his belly as Sam readjusts himself and fits himself right up against Dean, riding the erection already tenting his jeans. Knowing his cue, Dean starts on the fly of Sam's jeans. He barely gets the button undone before Sam goes completely off script and smacks his hands away. Actually smacks them, like Dean used to do when Sam would try and touch the stove when he was little.

"What the hell, man?"

Sam bats his hands away a second time, grabs them and pins them up by his head. He's leaning over Dean now and he can feel the teasing itch of the design on Sam's shirt hovering over the skin of his chest. Sam kisses him—one of those girly little closed-mouthed ones he loves so much—and the glint in his eye when he pulls back almost scares Dean for a second. Almost. "No touching."

"What do you mean, no touching?" Dean is incredulous, but doesn't try to touch Sam again. He is particularly proud of his restraint when Sam pushes himself back up, leans back against Dean's knees and unzips himself. Sam wraps a hand around his dick and starts to stroke, mouth falling open slightly as he pants. His eyes slide from Sam's fist gliding up and down his cock to his wrist and the veins standing out on his forearm. Dean's mind flashes fifteen minutes ahead to the inevitable outcome of this scene; Sam spread wide underneath him, moaning like a cheerleader and taking him deep while he sucks big bruises onto the thin skin of his arm. Sam's fingers digging in Dean's shoulder as he jacks Sam off, slow and gentle and then fast and rough; just like Sam likes it.

Dean's so-called self-restraint fails him as he grabs onto Sam's thighs again, splayed wide over his own waist, and uses them for leverage to rock up. Sam falters; his hand squeezes particularly hard and he clenches his jaw tight, obviously trying to resist Dean's magnificent charms. He digs a thumb into Dean's lower abdomen, near his groin muscle, and Dean bucks his hips in a decidedly un-sexual way.

"What part of it do you not understand? The 'no' part or the 'touching' part?"

"I guess that would be the part where you expect to get off."

"Oh, I think we both already know I can get off with no help from you whatsoever."

"That's what this is about? Come on, it's— _Jesus_ , Sammy." Dean's brain stutters to a halt as Sam rolls his hips, rubbing against Dean, and starts stroking himself again. He's hunched forward with a hand on Dean's chest, bracing himself as he fucks his fist. Sam's forearms flex and the veins shift as he licks his lips. His hips thrust forward into his hand and backwards against Dean, riding him through the denim. Every muscle in Dean's body is drawn tight as a bow as he tries desperately not to give in, not to touch Sam or thrust against him or react at all. Sam, the dirty bastard, lets go of his dick long enough to suck the precome off his fingers and thumb in quick but obscenely loud slurps. He licks his palm—damn near slobbers all over it—and moans like a freaking porn star when he gets back to business. It's not long at all, only another minute or two, before Sam comes, moaning and breathless and twitching, all over Dean's skin.

Sam shifts himself around, moving slowly and still obviously riding the high of his orgasm. Dean chokes slightly and maybe even almost comes close to screaming like a little girl a tiny bit when he catches sight of those damn birds in the bathroom again—but in his defense that yellow and black one totally just turned it's head to stare at them. Stupid-ass birds. Fucking Alfred Hitchcock. Sam leans all his weight onto his hands on Dean's ribs as he pants and shakes through the aftershocks. With his legs twitching and squeezing Dean, rocking him lightly, Sam bites at his own lips. Dean knows Sam said not to touch, but he's so hard and Sam looks so thoroughly _fucked_ that he's sure he's going to blow a fuse in his brain if he sits still any longer.

Dean's not sure if he actually calls Sam's name out loud or if Sam just hears it in the way his breath leaves his chest under his brother's hands, but either way, it doesn't matter—if there is any question left in his mind when Sam pushes himself back on his haunches and on Dean, it's answered when Sam rolls his hips back quick and hard while staring right at Dean's eyes. He doesn't need to be told twice—except when he's being told _no_ or _stop_ or _I swear to God, Dean, if you do that one more time_ —and grabs hold of Sam's hips, pulling Sam tight against him and using the little leverage he has to buck up and grind against Sam's ass.

Again, Sam's head drops low and he's making these quiet little grunts he probably doesn't think Dean can hear, and if Dean wasn't already right on the edge, that would have him there in a second. Sam straightens up slightly and starts to tug his shirt up and off. The marred and discolored skin fascinates Dean until Sam starts to sway. In an instant, Dean knows what all the millions of Japanese people in the Godzilla movies feel like as Sam seemingly falls forward and comes rushing at him with his full eight hundred pounds. Sam catches himself at the last minute on his huge, wily monkey arms and bends his head down to kiss him.

It's not a long kiss, but Dean doesn't mind and can't actually figure out how Sam managed to bend himself far enough in the first place; the wooly mammoth can barely get into the car without banging his head most days. And even Dean's willing to admit his girl is as big as a fucking tank. Sam lingers when he pulls back, drops another small kiss against his mouth and then another one before whispering, all soft and sweet like his damn coffee, "Made you flinch."

Dean laughs right into his mouth, pulls back and presses his face into his brother's neck and cracks up as he comes, fingers digging into Sam hard enough to feel him flinch. Sam says something after that, something about awesome brothers and showers and being considerate but Dean isn't sure what exactly. He feels good and mellow and welcomes the encroaching darkness with wide arms.

\--

Centralia, Pennsylvania is home to one of the longest burning fires, an underground coal fire. In the last forty years since the fire has started, the town's population dropped down to eleven people. Some died, some moved, and most were relocated with the help of government aid.

Sam and Dean come through here every few months; have been doing it ever since they were eight and twelve, respectively. The hot temperatures, combined with the ever-present smoke, randomly forming sinkholes, and lack of people, make Centralia a magnet for some of the weaker demons: the ones cursed with bodies; the ones who haven't earned their ability to possess yet. Demons with gnarled and grotesque limbs, with scaly and discolored flesh who can wreak little havoc personally in the world due to their pungent odor and horrifying appearance.

Sometimes the lesser demons do more damage than their more powerful counterparts; they always have something to prove. They're eager to earn their lack of a body and will do anything and everything in their power to get what they want.

Centralia is like their unofficial meeting ground, and whenever Sam and Dean are on the East Coast, they make it a point to swing by and take out as many as they can before night starts to set in and it gets too freaky even for them.

They are on the way out of New Hampshire towards nowhere in particular when Dean suggests stopping by again. Sam thinks about it for a moment and says, "What the hell. Not like we've got somewhere we have to be."

\--

Sam always forgets how much he hates this place until he's back here. The demons themselves aren't even the problem; they're probably the most mundane part of the each trip.

Something inside of Sam breaks every time he realizes that.

What Sam hates even more than the demons are all the things they have to do to go into that town safely: the face masks, air tanks and other things they stole off the firetruck in Missouri to protect them from the deadly fumes of the coal mine fires down below, chest waders for an extra few seconds of protection against the random and sudden-forming sinkholes in the ground, rosaries for the water, axes, shotguns and at least a half dozen other specific, and usually heavy, items for certain demons.

Sam lumbers through the thick smoke, flashlight in one hand, shotgun in the other. "It's like _Silent Hill_ down here."

"What?" Sam can barely hear Dean through his mask, and he only knows what Dean's asking by the way his eyebrow climbs and his face shifts.

Sam raises his voice a little louder and tries again. " _Silent Hill_!"

"What about a siren?"

" _Silent_! _Hill_!" Sam shouts through his mask. His throat is already starting to get dry and his voice cracks in the middle of the second word. "It's like _Silent Hill_ down here!"

"Oh." Dean nods. "What's that?"

Sam shrugs, clears his throat, and yells through his gas mask a little louder, "Some game my roommate used to play. Something about zombies. Or maybe monsters or something like that. I don't know; it just had a bunch of fog."

"Oh!" Dean nods again and Sam has no idea if he either didn't hear him or heard and isn't interested in the conversation.

"I hate this place."

"What?"

\--

Dean doesn't believe in those "before I die" lists. He thinks they're stupid and he hates Sam for keeping one. Sam thinks he's so smart about hiding it; the little bastard thinks Dean doesn't see him writing in one of his endless supplies of notebooks as he scratches things off and adds more crap.

Dean thinks those lists are stupid. They're morbid too; even he thinks so. And dangerous. What happens when you cross everything off your list? Suddenly it's just okay to lay down and die?

Fuck that shit.

Yeah, sure there are things Dean wants to do. He wants to see the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, wants to swim in one of the oceans of his own free will—not because some deformed seahorse with delusions of grandeur has started killing people. But he's never going to do them. Because after all that shit is done what else is there to look forward to? What's to keep him from letting some dead fucker off him and leave Sammy for easy pickings?

Exactly. Nothing.

Fucking Sam. Suicidal bastard. One of these days Dean swears he's gonna take those fucking lists and salt the bastards before using them to start a fucking forest-fire.

\--

"You realize I'm going to kill you, right?"

Even with Sam's head in his hands, Dean has no problem hearing him. That's the good thing about jail cells—they have great acoustics.

"They didn't even print us; we'll be gone in no time."

"They caught us burning the body of a dead cop! You don't think we're gonna make every paper in the state?"

"I'm hoping for national once we break out."

"I'm not kidding, Dean! We're in real trouble here."

"Whatever, man, we've been worse off. What's your deal? You were never this whiny any of the other times we got arrested."

"Because it was." Sam lowers his voice and glares at Dean. "Because we were never wanted by the FBI before. Jesus Christ, we were burning the body of one of their heroes!"

"Dude's ghost was killing people left, right and center. He had to get torched and you know it."

Sam scoffs and rolls his eyes and Dean is tempted to punch him right in his condescending face. "I know it had to happen. We just shouldn't have gotten caught."

"Yeah, whatever, my fault, I suck. Now fall over and start seizing."

"What?"

"You know the drill. We need out, you fake a seizure. Don't act like this is new."

"Why do I always have to fake the seizure?"

"You're bigger; it takes more of them to hold you down. Now come on, get to shaking."

"If I bite my tongue—"

"I'll kiss it better. Quit stalling."

\--

"You know, it's kind of ironic."

"What is?"

"We spend like, two weeks on an Indian reservation and don't get so much as a parking ticket, but we're in an actual town for less than a day and we get caught desecrating a grave."

"That's not ironic, it's funny."

"It is _to_ ironic! It's the epitome of irony."

"No it's not, ironic is..."

"Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife?"

"What?"

"Nothing."

\--

The clock reads two-thirty when Sam wakes up and he has to think back to breakfast and lunch to realize it's the middle of the afternoon and not the wee hours of the morning. His head hurts and he's tired and he's cranky and it takes him nearly a full minute to realize that Dean is crouched over him and kissing his neck. Not the normal "get your clothes off quick before you mess them" kind of kisses, either. Small ones. Slow, lingering presses of lips down his neck and around the neckline of his shirt. It takes a substantial effort to bring his hands up to Dean's back, to even keep his eyes open. His arms are still heavy with sleep and he can feel the puffiness around his eyes.

"Dean?" It's less of a question and more of a slur. The "D" is completely silent and Sam is self-consciously aware of how much of a three-year-old he probably sounded like right there. Dean doesn't smile at him, and thank God for that; it would be too creepy, but he lifts his head and he leans forward to meet Sam in a kiss.

This kiss is different, too, not like their usual kissing; there's no thrumming chorus of _hurry, hurry, hurry_ , no thick undercurrent of need or fear. The kiss isn't exactly slow but it's slower than it's been lately. It's lazy and comfortable and familiar. It's like back before Milwaukee, before Baltimore. Back when sex and kissing and anything that was them—that was SamandDean—became something to get over with as quick as possible, something to rush through before someone could possibly see. The kiss goes on long enough that Sam needs to yawn when they pull apart, has to stretch and crack his stiff neck. It's then, when he's rolling his head from side to side until he can feel that satisfying pop, that he realizes that Dean is naked. Not just naked but naked and not currently trying to fuck Sam or rub against him or slide down him or, come to think of it, do anything at all below their shoulders.

Sam doesn't let it show but a very sudden and gut-wrenching terror grips him for a moment. He's absolutely convinced that Dean has either done something stupid, like summon The Demon, or is planning on doing something stupid. Like turning himself in to The Feds. Dean gives Sam another sweet, slow kiss like he never, ever does and then starts kissing his way across Sam's jaw and towards his ear. Dean starts to nibble on his earlobe, tiny little licks and fucking _gentle_ tugs and Sam is so scared he think he might actually cry or throw up or something—he can't do this without Dean, not anymore, not for a long time now.

Dean whispers in his ear, "Say one fucking word and I swear I'll jizz in the pockets of every jacket you own the second you fall asleep," and the relief is so sudden he's a little lightheaded. Sam can't help the smile the spreads over his face as he grabs Dean and pulls him against him for another deep kiss. Sam gets it now; this isn't Dean apologizing for anything dumb like ruining their lives, it's Dean apologizing for being such a stupid, asshole loser-freak. Or something like that.

The kissing goes on for some time. Sam's hard but it's not an _extremely_ pressing matter. It's been far too long since Dean has been willing to spend any free time just making out and Sam's missed it. It's not that he doesn't like the sex, because the sex is fucking _amazing_ and one of Sam's favorite ways to pass the time. It's just that he likes kissing; he always has. And he's missed it. They haven't really had any really good make-out sessions in a while; when you're too scared and paranoid to even get fully naked for sex spending excess time kissing is pretty much out of the question.

Dean's hands move from Sam's waist up underneath his shirt and Sam knows his cue. It's a struggle to pull his shirt off while laying down but he manages it. He manages to elbow Dean in the face twice, but he gets his shirt off. Dean's hand finds Sam's not-quite-ticklish spot—the one high on his side, halfway between his chest and his back—and Sam arches into it, a weird half-laugh caught in his throat, and groans when Dean drags his palm down warm skin until he's squeezing Sam through his sleep shorts. Sam bucks up into Dean's hand again and digs his fingers into Dean's back while very narrowly avoiding biting Dean's tongue. His hands slide down towards Dean's ass and almost manage to make it there when someone knocks on the door.

He can feel Dean tense. Every muscle in his body seems to lock right in place when a loud and heavily accented voice calls out, "Housekeeping!"

Sam tries desperately to pull Dean back down, to kiss him and get him going again before it's too late. There's nothing to worry about, really. He put the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door right when they walked in. It's always the first thing they do, sex or no sex. When the knocking starts once more and the maid yells louder this time, Sam can’t help but curse her in his head.

There's one more knock, and then Sam sees the door open. They've got the latch on, of course, so the door gets only about an inch open, but Sam grabs Dean's hips anyway. Dean isn't great about people finding them like this—it doesn't matter if they've introduced themselves as brothers or not—and since it was just starting to get good, Sam's not gonna let Dean jump off the bed like a scared cat or something. And, besides, Sam would rather some random maid not see the hard-on he's sporting right now.

Dean's hand slides back up Sam's chest, back to that spot on his side and scratches at it _just_ right. The air rushes out of Sam’s lungs so fast that for a moment, he’s sure that they’ve collapsed. Dean leans down and kisses Sam's lips chastely before turning his head back towards the door and screaming, "Go away!"

That damn maid will not be deterred, though; she's peeking through the gap of the door, eyeing them in a way that makes Sam very uncomfortable. Before he can say anything Dean pitches himself sideways—almost off the bed—and makes a grab for something. Suddenly there's a shoe—one of Sam's, dammit—flying through the air towards the door and Dean is _roaring_ , "Go—the fuck—away!"

The door is quickly shut amidst a loud string of foreign words. Sam doesn't speak much besides English and Latin, but he recognizes the angry tone enough to know it's cursing. Dean leans back down and resumes kissing like nothing happened at all. It takes Sam's brain a few seconds to come back online but when it does, he realizes Dean isn't scared. At all. That's so insanely hot that Sam can only barely keep himself in line. He tears his mouth from Dean's to bite at his neck. Spreading his legs wide, he bucks up once, twice, before panting roughly in Dean's ear, "Where's the lube?"

The response he gets is not exactly what he was expecting.

"Uh... I think it's in your bag?"

"What? You woke me up naked and you didn't even get out the lube?"

"Hey, I was planning on just giving you a blowjob!"

"You're naked!"

"I was kinda hoping you'd return the favor when you were done."

"I guess we could—" Sam flails his hand around, trying not to use the term. "You know."

"Sixty-nine? Fuck that, you almost bit my dick off last time!"

"You stuck your tongue in my ass."

"You loved it."

"Yeah, I loved it so much I bit your dick."

"What do _you_ wanna do, then?"

"You're not fucking me dry."

"I don't wanna fuck you dry. Do you have any idea how much that hurts your dick?"

Sam's eyes are drawn towards the aforementioned dick and are instead caught on the shallow cut of Dean's hip. God, he's had full-fledged dreams about that dip. "Can I, can..." He can't even say it; he takes a deep breath and tries a different tactic. "You trust me?"

Dean protests jokingly even as he lets Sam roll him over. "Nothing good ever comes from those words."

Sam leans back up and shimmy-twists out of his shorts and underwear, drops them by his lone shoe and crawls back up his brother. He can't make himself look Dean in the eyes. He keeps his eyes on a shoulder instead as he arranges himself: moves and shifts until his cock is in the groove of Dean's hip, right where he wants it. He settles his weight on his forearms and Dean, presses his face into Dean's shoulder and rocks down. Dean's got one hand tangled in Sam's hair, fingers scratching lightly, and the other one gripping his arm, squeezing hard. Sam thrusts back and forth, rides the cut of muscle and tries to swallow the embarrassment that crawls up in the back of his throat. He doesn't even want to fuck Dean; that's not really appealing to him. He just wants to fuck that spot next to his brother's hip. It makes him feel like he's fourteen again and jerking off to thoughts he's too scared to admit to. The shame doesn't do much for his sex drive but Dean's making encouraging noises underneath him, murmuring, "C'mon, Sammy," and biting at his neck, sharp teeth and wet tongue. It's only another few hard thrusts before he's coming hard and shaking weakly.

Sam can look now; he lifts his head and spares a glance to Dean. Dean, who is completely unfazed and smirking like a little bastard. Sam huffs out a laugh despite himself and reaches down to finish Dean off.

And God, Dean is barely even hard and Sam feels like shit now. He hates getting off when Dean's soft. _Hates_ it. It makes him feel like he's just taking from Dean and that makes him feel sick in the pit of his stomach. Dean's pushing at him, trying to get Sam off of him so he can get up and clean off probably. He looks... Sam wouldn't go so far as to say that he looks happy, but he doesn't look angry. He looks content and _damn it_ , that's not what this is about. Sam would rather jerk himself off with Dean in one of his post-coital comas next to him than get off and leave Dean like that. Dean tries to shove him again and Sam shoves back. Well, okay, he doesn't really shove; he just uses his leverage and weight to keep Dean's shoulders down against the bed like they should be. He licks his palm in big, wet swipes of tongue right in front of Dean's face like he knows Dean likes and snakes his hand between them to grab Dean's cock, tugging at it hard and quick as he mouths at Dean's jaw, kisses and nibbles with light scrapes of teeth.

"Come on, Dean, please. Come on." The arm trapped between their shoulders is gripping Sam, thumb digging into his collarbone, not hard enough to hurt but definitely stinging. Sam doesn't let up because he still doesn't know if he's going to be shoved back if he does and he can't let that happen right now. Dean's free hand, the left one, wraps around his own and guides him; faster then slower, where to twist—like Sam doesn't have all Dean's spots memorized—and in no time at all Dean's coming. There's no warning, just a choking sound and then Dean's hips jerk once, twice and their hands are wet with his come.

Dean's chest rises and falls quickly as he drags in air, his mouth open. His tongue flicks out to wet his lips and his eyes are closed and Sam knows he'll be dead to the world in minutes. Sam gives another soft stroke to Dean's cock before he sits up and licks the come off of his brother's hand, sucks at the knuckles and tongues the webbing between the fingers. Dean lets out a weak, tired little moan and sighs cheerfully. Sam knows it's ridiculous and girly but he kisses the back of Dean's hand before he sets it back on the bed and gets up to go clean off and find something to sleep in.

He doesn't make it off the bed. He's got one foot on the floor and one knee still on the bed when Dean's hand wraps around his wrist.

"Go to sleep, man, I'm fine."

Dean doesn't let go, though. He just tugs at Sam's wrist again, harder this time.

"Dean—" The rest of the sentence dies as Dean tugs once, hard, and Sam falls ass-backwards onto the bed. Dean says nothing; still hasn't even opened his eyes. He just pulls at Sam until he's laying on the bed. Dean grabs at the blanket shoved down by the foot of the bed and pulls it up and over them. His hands slide over Sam's skin; they push and pull and guide, tucking Sam into him and securing him tight.

Sam can feel Dean's breath hot and clammy on the back of his neck when Dean presses a kiss there and then doesn't move back. Dean's got one arm up and under the pillows, parallel to Sam's, and the other is between Sam's own arm and his torso, fingers tucked in between the side of his chest and the bed, thumb rubbing idle circles where it rests. Dean's got a leg hitched up over Sam's hip and twined with Sam's; his ankle tucked into the back of his knee. Sam tucks the blanket high under his chin, under his and Dean's arms and legs, snuggles back against his brother and resists the sudden and random urge to say something incredibly sappy and stupid that they both already know.

Dean squeezes Sam tight and sighs. He mumbles something about, "Baby spoon," and then huffs out quiet snores on Sam's neck. The only reason Sam doesn't respond to that is because Dean's asleep already. And because he thinks whatever that was was kind of cute. Also because he's too tired to think of a good comeback. And, most importantly, because _Sam_ is the baby spoon.

\--

 _Can't anybody read a sign? "Fifteen Minute Unloading" is still fifteen minute unloading, no matter what time of night it is._ Lola parks her cart— _a fucking cart and isn't that just ridiculous this time of the year_ —and stands beside it for a moment to admire the beauty of the car in front of her.

She doesn't know much about cars, can't tell the years apart or the makes or models, but even she can see this one is well-loved and taken care of. Glossy black paint, minimal dirt and maybe even older than she is. She could live without the ridiculous flames on the side or bumper stickers and window clings but all in all it's a beautiful car. Well taken care of too; there isn't even a scratch or a dent on her and Lola has to take a moment to wonder what a car like that is doing parked in a neighborhood like this.

She gets her answer a moment later when she moves to take down the license plate— _Hawaii? How'd you get here in a car?_ —and the car rocks lightly before settling back in place.

 _Shame, shame, shame._ Lola puts on her game face and approaches the driver's side window, intent on giving the owner and whatever working girl he's picked up— _only one reason for a nice car to be around here, should've known_ —a nice shock before sending them on their way.

The shock is on her, though, because as she comes up to the window she realizes that not only is there no girl in the car but there's no sex going on, either. The front seat is folded down and back into a makeshift bed and on it, and the backseat, are two boys— _men, not boys, full-grown men_ —fully-clothed and sleeping. One of them, the one with short hair, is stretched out diagonally on his back, head pressed between the steering wheel and the door with a leg up and poking out the back rear passenger window— _should've seen that, damn late hours_ —arms akimbo and snoring from what she can hear. The second one, with the longer hair, is in between the first one's legs, head on the first one's stomach with an arm covering his face like her little boy used to during thunderstorms.

 _Aw, now that's just sweet._

On second glance, Lola notices the food wrappers— _AMPM, White Castle, Jack in the Box, Taco King, Nathan's Super Dog_ —and maps in the front window and the horrifyingly bright blue paisley blanket caught around one of the second boy's legs.

 _Oh._ Lola's thoughts flash back to her big brother, Ricky, and his "friend" from high school, then to the bag Ricky took with him when Daddy tossed him out.

Lola taps her flashlight on the window and the first one wakes with a jolt, head bouncing off the steering wheel and blaring the horn. The look of shock on the boys' faces is almost comical, and if not for the sudden ache in her chest, Lola might've laughed.

"Ten minutes," she says, pointing to her watch. The first one levels a stare at her that almost makes her flinch back— _boy must've been on the streets for a long time_ — and the second one grabs at the first one's arm as if to settle him. "I'm driving around the block. When I get back, your car won't be here, _capisce_?"

"Yes, ma'am," comes the almost coordinated response.

"Good boys." Lola smiles at them. "Stay safe out here."

With that, Lola gets back in her cart— _at least it's not a bike_ —and drives on to the next block, idling there until the black car drives off.

\--

It's been a month and a half since they've heard so much as a whisper about them. That is, of course, not counting the daily sightings all across the country and various "victims" popping up on various news programs. Henriksen is back in Milwaukee catching up on overdue paperwork when he gets the news.

 _No. No, no, no!_ He double and triple checks the packet of paper in front of him. _Fuck! Fuck! Motherfucking son of a bitch!_ "Goddamnit!" he barks out, slamming his fist onto his desk.

"Paper cut?" Reed is standing next to Victor's desk, holding a cup of coffee in an outstretched hand. Victor takes the offered drink without a thanks. Reed doesn't need one; they've been partners for going on nine years now. Victor isn't even bothered that he didn't notice him approach.

"They were in Waynesboro. They were conning their way out of Waynesboro while we were sniffing their piss in State Line."

"So they _were_ in Mississippi."

"Damn right they were in Mississippi; they were twenty miles north of us desecrating the grave of a decorated police commissioner while we were trying to sort out their fucking credit cards."

"How do we know this is them? It could be the dad; they inherited their M.O. from him, right?"

"We know it's them because they got caught! They were _arrested_ in the middle of lighting the corpse on fire. They got booked and put in a fucking jail cell and we missed it!"

"And they got out? What happened, was it like Baltimore, Missouri, or Jersey?"

"Oh, that's the best part. Listen to this; they were in a cell together, _alone_. All of a sudden Dean starts screaming for help because Sam is apparently having a 'seizure.' Two of the local doughnut munchers go running into their cell and can you guess what happens next?"

"They wake up an unknown amount of time later handcuffed, in the Winchester's cell in their underwear with their uniforms and weapons nowhere to be found."

"Give the man a dollar."

"Well, shit."

"Yeah."

Reed sits in his chair heavily, drops himself into it, really. The chair creaks and protests for only a minute before going quiet. The only sound that can be heard is the low and unconsciously synchronized breathing of the two men as they silently contemplate what they're going to do now.

They sit in silence.


	2. Extras: Pop-Culture References

_This is Ourselves (Under Pressure)_ – Title – A line from [Under Pressure](http://www.sendspace.com/file/2h418j), a Song by Queen (featuring David Bowie).

\--

 _"Sam finally falls asleep with Dean's hand in his hair and John Mayer wondering in his ear whether or not he's living his life the right way."_ – The song Sam is listening to as he falls asleep is [Why Georgia](http://www.sendspace.com/file/aappu8) by John Mayer.

\--

 _They spend an hour and a half trying to dig and push and shove their car out of the mud. Sam makes no less than three references to My Cousin Vinny and Dean makes no less than five threats to Sam's life and/or various vital and functioning parts of his body._ – Movie – In a scene in the movie, the title character and his fiancé are attempting to push their car out of thick Alabama mud. It doesn't go too well for them.

\--

 _It's only a small car chase; it probably wouldn't even have made the news if it weren't for the Blues Brothers car crash the cops got into that let them escape. _– Movie – Blues Brothers has a famous and legendary (if you're from Chicago) car chase with an extensive pile-up of police cruisers. Blues Brothers 2000 has another good and absurd car chase ending in an absurd pile-up, but Dean is nothing if not a man of the classics, so he is referring to the first movie.

\--

 _"You know, when Harry did it, it _actually_ made him invisible."_

Dean cocks an eyebrow at Sam. "Who?"

Sam winces and struggles with himself for a moment, mouth opening and closing like a fish, before sighing. "Harry Potter." – Book – Dude, I hope I'm not telling anyone anything new when I say Harry Potter is a book about a boy who is a wizard. Apparently, he has a cloak that makes him invisible.

\--

 _"Hey, Hardy Boys, you two wanna focus?"_ – Book series – The Hardy Boys investigated stuff. That's the sum total of my knowledge on this.

\--

 _"[…] What do you want me to do, dye my hair blond and start going by some douche-baggy name like Chad?"_ – Celebrity – Chad Michael Murray is the biggest douche bag in the world. I love him and I say this. Really, there is no contesting this by anyone. He is also [](http://alazysod.livejournal.com/profile?mode=full)[**alazysod**](http://alazysod.livejournal.com/) 's sekrit lovah.

\--

 _He knows for a fact that Dean knows exactly what happened to Bonnie and Clyde_ – Celebrities – Bonnie and Clyde were killed May 23, 1934, on a desolate road near their Bienville Parish, Louisiana hideout. They were shot by a posse of four Texas and two Louisiana officers. The lawmen ambushed them and opened fire, killing Bonnie and Clyde while shooting a combined total of approximately 130 rounds.

\--

 _It's a '57 Plymouth Fury, a cherry '64 Rambler, and a brand new Aston Martin. It's a silver DeLorean, a black Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, and a bright, prison orange '69 Dodge Charger. It's a beat to hell, falling apart at the seams '74 Dodge Monaco, a cherry '73 Ford Mustang and a run of the mill VW Bug._ – TV, Movies – Okay. In order: The fury is Christine from the movie of the same name, the Rambler is the car from Third Rock from the Sun, The Aston Martin DBS is The Bond Car, the DeLorean is from the Back to the Future movies, the Pontiac Firebird is KITT from Knightrider, the Charger is the General Lee from Dukes of Hazard, the Monaco is the Bluesmobile from Blues Brothers, the Mustang is Eleanor from Gone in Sixty Seconds, and the Bug is Herbie the Love Bug.

\--

 _It's the motherfucking Batmobile and the goddamned Black fucking Pearl._ – Comics, TV, Movies – The Batmobile is Batman's car. If you don't know this, my Geeky Little Comic Whore heart cries for you. The Black Pearl is Captain Jack Sparrow's ship in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Both are considered mythical in their own canons, not thought to actually exist. An urban legend and a ghost ship.

\--

 _On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha_ – Music – Opening line to [Turn the Page](http://www.sendspace.com/file/9176t7) by Bob Seger. Yeah, that's right, I worked Bob Seger into my porn.

\--

 _"You Shook Me All Night Long" is blaring from the speakers, words nearly lost to the loud, thumping bass of the stereo turned up to eleven._ – Music, Movie – A two-fer! [You Shook Me All Night Long](http://www.sendspace.com/file/dz8qc8) is a song by AC/DC. The part with the stereo turned up to eleven is a reference to This Is Spinal Tap, a movie about a fictional rock band. If you still don't know the reference, you need to Wiki it now.

\--

 _Fox Mulder has bright yellow eyes and a tray full of razor-sharp and pointy instruments he hands to Sam. Gillian Anderson narrates the scene as Sam happily, _gleefully_ hacks his big brother to thousands of tiny pieces. _ – TV – Obligatory The X-Files reference. Fox Mulder is a fictional FBI agent played by [David Duchovny ~~why don't you love me?~~](http://www.sendspace.com/file/hsfp2d), Gillian Anderson played his partner, Dana Scully.

\--

 _The postmark is from Winnemucca, Nevada._ – Music – Winnemucca is the first place Johnny Cash mentions in his song, [I've Been Everywhere](http://www.sendspace.com/file/ljy7fj).

\--

 _The name on the card reads Dick Kimble and the messy scrawl on the back says something he can't decipher._ – TV, Movie – "Dick" is a shortened version of "Richard." Richard Kimble the leader character in The Fugitive TV shows and movie, an innocent man on the run from the law after being accused of a crime he didn't commit.

\--

 _The one-armed stick figure in the bottom corner mocks Victor from its perch next to his computer._ – TV, Movie – See above. That crime Richard Kimble didn't commit? Was committed by the one-armed-man.

\--

 _The next postcard arrives from Panama, Oklahoma._ – TV, Music – Okay, so this one is two-fold and I'm a loser. First ref is Johnny Cash again, another place he mentions in [I've Been Everywhere](http://www.sendspace.com/file/ljy7fj). The loser bit of me is that this also vaguely references Prison Break, in which the world's smartest idiot and his wrongly-convicted brother plan to break out of prison and head to Panama. I know they don't mean Oklahoma, but I picked it anyway.

\--

 _The front of the postcard boasts of sunny Florida skies and has a crude, hand drawn arrow pointing randomly into the beach crowd boasting WALDO in large, messy letters._ – Book –  Where's Waldo is a popular children's book here in the US. Waldo is a tall, thin, man in a red and white striped shirt who is often seen hiding in massive crowds.

\--

 _Run! Run! Run!_

As fast as you can!

You can't catch me!

I'm The Ginger Bread Man! – Children's Rhyme – Yeah, I don't know how to get much more specific than that without telling the whole story.

\--

 _It has been on the FBI watch-list for almost forty years, ever since Starkweather and his girlfriend grabbed burgers there on the way to Wyoming back in '58._ – True Crime – Charles Starkweather and his juvenile girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, went on a week-long killing spree from Nebraska to Wyoming. Starkweather and Fugate are the inspirations for several team spree killers in entertainment such as those on Kalifornia and Natural Born Killers.

\--

 _"Keisha brought in the mail and asked why we got a postcard from Lincoln Burrows. […]"_ – TV – Lincoln Burrows is the name of one of the lead characters on Prison Break. He is currently on the run from every government agency there is and every cop around after breaking out of jail before he was to be executed for a murder he did not commit.

\--

 _Dean and Sam are at an all-night laundry mat in Oklahoma washing their clothes after a bad fight with a chick that tried to go all Carrie on her senior prom. It took four runs through the heavy-duty washers to get all the blood—sheep, cow, goat, and Carrie Jr.—out, but three hours later they're almost done._ – Movie, Book – Carrie is a short story by Stephen King that was later turned into a movie. The main protagonist is a young girl named Carrie, a social outcast at school, who—after having pig's blood dumped on her upon being crowned prom queen—snaps and kills everyone at her prom.

\--

 

 _"Oh my God! Oh my God! I _love_ your show! Can I have your autograph?"_

Dean has no idea who the hell she thinks he is, but he's never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Well, of course you can! Who should I make it out to?" – Celebrity – Three guesses, first two don't count.

\--

 _It's Tuesday night and Sam hasn't shaved since Saturday when he and Dean catch themselves on America's Most Wanted. _– TV – America's Most Wanted is a popular show in the US hosted by John Walsh. It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

\--

 _It's the times when they have to bunk down in the car because John Walsh has a hard-on for them that rivals pedophiles and they can't risk trying to get a motel room._ – TV – John Walsh's son was abducted and murdered at a young age; this caused him to start America's Most Wanted. He is a well-known children's advocate and has a special abhorrence and hatred for those who hurt children.

\--

 _When Sam was in college, he dated a guy who lived and worked in Santa Cruz. Sam more or less lived with him for an entire summer and made his way up on the weekends to visit for months after classes started back up._ – Movie – Yeah. I can't name the movie because I think it might be considered a crossover if I did but it's probably the one you're thinking of.

\--

 _They're sitting in the Saturn Café, a gimmicky theme restaurant, when it happens._ – Place – Yes, this is a real vegetarian restaurant in Santa Cruz. Yes, it looks like this, yes, it's open that late, yes, that stuff is really on the menu and yes, the waiter/esses work there.

\--

 _Their table has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joes and Barbies with big, crimped hair under the glass._ – Toys, TV – The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joes and Barbies are all toys that were popular in the eighties. The specific Barbie mentioned is Rocker Barbie.

\--

 _Dean points to the Donatello in the table locked in combat with a half melted Treasure Troll._ – Toys, TV – Donatello is one of The Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles, the nerdy brain one to be exact. If Sam were a turtle, he'd be Donatello. Treasure Trolls were these ridiculous little naked toys with bright colored hair that stood on end and jewels in their tummies. It was said that if you made a wish and stroked the jewel or hair that your wish would come true.

\--

 _"[…] You know, the fact that you still play with your Boba Fett doll doesn't make you a girl. […]"_ – Movie – Boba Fett is an intergalactic Bounty hunter in the Star Wars universe.

\--

 _"[…] All that Bonne Bell lip gloss you wear—that's what makes you a girl. […]"_ – Womanly crap – Bonne Bell is a lip gloss for girls. It's girly looking and comes in shiny glosses and sparkly things and tubs and squeeze tubes and plain old chapstick tubes. They have a wide array of flavors like Dr. Pepper, vanilla, strawberry kiwi and other stuff like that.

\--

 _"Oh, you tubby motherfucker, come on, you can't be asleep right now."_ – Movie – Dean calling Sam a "tubby motherfucker" is a subtle nod to Jay and Silent Bob from Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse. Jay, the idiot man-child, calls his hetero life-mate, Silent Bob, a "tubby motherfucker" on several occasions throughout the movies.

\--

 _Dean hitches Sam up on his back, high enough to lift his Sideshow Bob feet off the ground and maneuver them both to see what the hell the noise behind them is._ – TV – Sideshow Bob is a character from The Simpson's. He's very tall with huge feet and a genius. He was also put in jail for several crimes and used to get pies thrown in his face on a kid's show for a living (yes, those two are directly connected).

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 _Some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Leroy Jenkins' credit card._ – Idiots – Really, the only way to explain it is to [link you to the YouTube.](http://youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU)

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 _"The website says, 'On April 12, 1968, several thousand sheep in Skull Valley were killed by VX gas,' that's nerve gas, 'released in a test from the nearby Dugway Proving Ground, as noted in the Stephen King novel The Stand.'" _– Place – This really happened. [See.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Valley_Indian_Reservation)

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 _"You hate Stephen King."_

His older brother chuckles, giving Sam a crooked smirk. "No, you hate Stephen King. I think he writes great comedies." – Fic – Minor reference to [](http://eighth-horizon.livejournal.com/profile?mode=full)[**eighth_horizon**](http://eighth-horizon.livejournal.com/) 's [Drunken Letters to Stephen King](http://eighth-horizon.livejournal.com/tag/drunken+sam-fu).

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 _"What about Spiderman?"_ – Comic, TV, Movie – Sam says it all, really. Bit by radioactive spider, got spider powers.

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 _Jerry, Maury, Montel, Starting Over. Fucking daytime TV._ – TV – Daytime TV talk show. Jerry Springer, King of Trailer Trash; Maury Povich, who wants to know who the baby's daddy really is; and Montel Williams, who likes to talk to Silvia Browne and people who have lived through amazing things that should’ve killed them. I don't know exactly what Starting Over is but I still hate it.

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 _That night, he finds a phone book at the local Circle K, calls first motel, and asks for Rockford._ – Movie – Sam and Dean's code for whenever they get separated, as told in The Usual Suspects.

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 _It takes him almost ten minutes to remember what the last name of the guy from Nightstalker is but when he finally does the man on the other line connects him to room 415. _– TV – Nightstalker was a show about a journalist who hunts down stories about the supernatural.

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 _He's also gained a pair of clean briefs and his blanket, the soft electric blue one Dean stole for him from The Comfort Eagle in North Carolina last year._ – Music – Comfort Eagle is the name of a CD by a band called Cake. It is also the name of a song they do.

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 _Stupid-ass birds. Fucking Alfred Hitchcock._ – Movie –  The Birds is a movie by Alfred Hitchcock about killer birds.

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 _In an instant, Dean knows what all millions of Japanese people in the Godzilla movies feel like as Sam seemingly falls forward and comes rushing at him with his full eight hundred pounds._ – Movie –  Godzilla is a series of movies. Godzilla comes from Japan where he stomps all over tiny Japanese people and attacks their city.

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 _Centralia, Pennsylvania is home to one of the longest burning fires, an underground coal fire. In the last forty years since the fire has started, the town's population dropped down to eleven people. Some died, some moved, and most were relocated with the help of government aid._ – Place, Video Game, Movie – Centralia is a real place in Pennsylvania and everything in that paragraph is true. It is the real life inspiration for the town of  Silent Hill in both the video game and the movie. I'm sure there aren't really demons there but the rest of the stuff comes straight from sites and articles on it.

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 _Sam lumbers through the thick smoke, flashlight in one hand, shotgun in the other. "It's like Silent Hill down here."_ – Video Game, Movie – A video game series and movie loosely inspired by Centralia. The signature of the game is the ever-present fog and the ability to both make grown men jump like little girls and exclaim, "That wasn't scary!"

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 _Sam raises his voice a little louder and tries again. " Silent Hill!"_

"What about a siren?" – Video Game, Movie – In the Silent Hill series nightfall—when all the deadly creatures come out—is marked by a siren sounding. There is no siren sounding in this part but I wanted to give another Geektastic nod.

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 _"Why do I always have to fake the seizure?"_ – TV – This is a nod to the pilot episode of the Eddie Izzard show  The Riches. In the pilot, the main characters are pulled over and get away after the oldest son fakes a seizure.

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 _"No it's not, ironic is…"_

"Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife?" – Music – The line, "Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife?" is from the Alanis Morissette song [Ironic](http://www.sendspace.com/file/80uh5w). Ironically, enough there is not a single ironic reference in the entire song.

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 _She gets her answer a moment later when she moves to take down the license plate— _Hawaii? How'd you get here in a car?_ —and the car rocks lightly before settling back in place._ \- TV - There's a skit on one episode of [Who's Line Is It Anyway?](http://www.tv.com/whose-line-is-it-anyway/show-no.-611/episode/256237/summary.html) where Ryan Stiles is answering the prompt of "Strange welcome greetings on signs as you enter different U. S. states."


End file.
